Map Requests

[chris the cynic]

The gas station is confounding.

I'm used to things being snapped to a 16x16 grid, and when they aren't I'm used to them being at a power of two (8, less often four, I'm not sure if I've ever really seen something offset by 2.) So I was somewhat surprised to see that the sign was 12 units wide. I now know that that was nothing. Much of the station appears to have been created freehand with no grid involved whatsoever. In some places things are fractions of units away from making sense, who the hell makes a brush that isn't an integer wide, tall, or whatever?

In other places it's not just the off the grid quality that makes things weird. The canyon edge to the west is built with an add which extends below the map. And when I say it extends below the map I don't mean that it has some kind of useless extra section below the map, I mean formed terrain. There's also an entire section of blacktop that's sunken in the ground so that you cannot see it at all.

I thought that the fact that the cloud layer was made of a solid instead of a nonsolid was odd, but I see that the same thing was done in Hong Kong, Vandenberg, the sub base, the missile silo, and Area 51.

-

In other news, it has only recently occurred to me that the gas prices at the station, currently fairly normal, were probably intended to be apocalyptic when the game came out.

[gamer0004]

So now that everyone has been driven away by the topic of combining the maps, I'd like to say something that's closer to the original topic.

Exits.

Jordan Shea says that if the roads weren't closed you could walk to the warehouse district. When she says that it makes perfect sense, because there's a visibly closed road. She said that you can't get there because the road was closed by the riot cops, there's a road that's been closed by riot cops it seems like everything makes sense.

The problem comes two levels later when the road is opened. I'm not referring to the fact that the road which is opened doesn't resemble what the road that was closed. (I don't think many people hop up and down on the roadblock when the road is closed trying to get a glimpse so that they can be pissed off when the open road doesn't resemble what was behind the closed doors.) I am instead referring to the fact that the road doesn't go anywhere. The road goes from the New York City Street map, to the NSF HQ, and nowhere else. It just stops at a dead end in front of the NSF HQ. The road leading south that Jordan Shea told us about doesn't exist. There should be a road leading south (it should be closed, don't get me wrong, but it should exist.)

The warehouse district itself should also have at least one way out of it. Closed to the player, of course, but it should be there.

I very much agree, the fact that there are no roads leading anywhere is really weird.

When JC finds the MJ12 tunnels underground Alex points out that those tunnels aren't on his New York City sewer maps. Meaning that the sewer JC is in when he finds the tunnel must be on one of those maps (otherwise Alex would have said it sooner) the trouble is, the sewer JC is in at the time doesn't go anywhere. It serves no function other than as an entrance to the tunnels that are not on Alex's maps. That isn't right. The sewer should extend beyond the part JC can access. (So perhaps it could branch off but have the branches barred so JC cannot go into said branches.)

I don't agree on this though. The idea of those sewers is that in fact they aren't really meant to be sewers, but an inconspicuous 'camouflaged' entrance to that water plant. That's the reason why they aren't on the sewer maps: because they aren't sewers.

When JC finally arrives at the facility where MJ12 is holding Ford, Alex immediately tells him it is an old water treatment plant. So that is on one of his maps. It makes no sense that the only entrance to something that is on Alex's maps should be a system of tunnels that is not. The water treatment plant should have another exit. Presumably this would involve adding a locked door, the only potential annoyance being that the type of doors used in that area are not the type of doors you use use the barred door texture on, which means you potentially have the problem of a player looking high and low for a way to open a door that cannot be opened.

Perhaps the easiest solution would be to make one or two hatches which aren't movers (so there's no inf/inf indication, it's basically a texture).

[Morpheus]

When JC finally arrives at the facility where MJ12 is holding Ford, Alex immediately tells him it is an old water treatment plant. So that is on one of his maps. It makes no sense that the only entrance to something that is on Alex's maps should be a system of tunnels that is not. The water treatment plant should have another exit. Presumably this would involve adding a locked door, the only potential annoyance being that the type of doors used in that area are not the type of doors you use use the barred door texture on, which means you potentially have the problem of a player looking high and low for a way to open a door that cannot be opened.

Maybe the area changed since his maps were made or he knew the treatment plant was down there already?

Not sure if this was mentioned but this BSP hole needs fixed in Area 51 Bunker at the wall just behind the big damaged warehouse (see left on this image, this image was brightened as it was dark when I took screenshot and didn't show the area too well): http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/71 ... 005ec.jpg/

Also, I don't know if this is in the scope of this project or Deus Ex v2.0 - The unofficial fan patch, but the UNATCO Return outtro music is never used but I think it would be good to use it as it sounds good and would be good for the last time you leave Liberty Island.

Not important as they are not going to be used, but there is a couple of extra patterns in Paris Cathedral music and HK Versalife music that are also never used. (I can't recall what they are exactly since I don't know how to see all the patterns in Modplug tracker besides the ones being used)

[DaveW]

The sewers are confusing, because while the MJ12 have clearly commandeered them to build a makeshift base, the main complex is clearly that: a sewer. So it should be on Alex's map, really - just not in the form it is ingame. I'm not quite sure what to suggest doing, but an extra door leading out of the water treatment area isn't going to hurt - it could always be an open door leading to a collapsed corridor filled with steam or something.

Also well spotted with the gas station prices. I never actually thought of that - they do seem fairly reasonable. Maybe I'll go back into the texture and up the prices a bit.

Morpheus - I actually had a hard time spotting that before I went ingame and found it myself - that's...quite a large hole. Added to the list

[chris the cynic]

When JC finds the MJ12 tunnels underground Alex points out that those tunnels aren't on his New York City sewer maps. Meaning that the sewer JC is in when he finds the tunnel must be on one of those maps (otherwise Alex would have said it sooner) the trouble is, the sewer JC is in at the time doesn't go anywhere. It serves no function other than as an entrance to the tunnels that are not on Alex's maps. That isn't right. The sewer should extend beyond the part JC can access. (So perhaps it could branch off but have the branches barred so JC cannot go into said branches.)

I don't agree on this though. The idea of those sewers is that in fact they aren't really meant to be sewers, but an inconspicuous 'camouflaged' entrance to that water plant. That's the reason why they aren't on the sewer maps: because they aren't sewers.

It probably surprises no one that I disagree with your disagreeing with me.

My argument is basically this:

Enter the underground from the manhole by the subway. You'll find your self in a section of sewer that, while not extensive, is nothing to scoff at. It's about as long as the water treatment plant itself, if you look at the rectangle it occupies (longest x by longest y) it's bigger than a subway station, about the same size as the outside of the 'Ton. If I'm doing my Deus Ex to real world conversions right, you can walk into it 92 feet, hang a right, and walk through it for another 62 feet.

In that space you can trip alarms, or bypass them, get shot by a turret, find a crowbar, find the bodies of an MJ12 trooper and an NSF trooper, and generally walk around a lot. Alex will say nothing about the tunnels not being on his map. But, if you open the door to the clearly-not-sewer MJ12 tunnels, Alex will almost immediately point out that those tunnels are not on his map. How immediately? If you just walk in without thinking about it, noticeably less than a second. I think it's about two and a half steps, assuming everything is default. If I try to quantify it, it looks to be about 4 feet west of the west end of the door. Of course you also have to go somewhat south (it is a curved hall), so it would probably be closer to ten or 12 feet.

My point is this: you can meander around the sewer section as much as you want as long as you want, and there's a lot of space there to do it in. Alex says nothing. Almost the same moment you step into the different looking tunnels that are protected with a keypad activated door, Alex will say, "These tunnels aren't on the New York City sewer maps -- weird. I have no information on what you might be getting into. This seems worth following up." You couldn't walk around in those tunnels without setting off the infolink message unless you were trying to. And even if you were, there would be almost no space to walk in because the infolink trigger is placed pretty much at the entrance.

To me, that seems to indicate that the non-sewer looking tunnels are different than the sewer looking ones. If the sewer looking ones weren't on Alex's map he'd say that they weren't when you first entered them, not when you left them to enter the other tunnels. That you can walk around the sewery section so much and have Alex say nothing, but you step inside the the other section and almost immediately Alex says the tunnels aren't on his map tells me that the sewery tunnels were on his map.

-

[And I see other people have chimed in since I started writing.]

I don't know if you want you change the price of gas or leave it as it was. If you do want to change it, it looks to me like they picked prices around three to four times higher than they were at the time (depending on when they picked those prices), so to do the same thing you'd want to set the price of regular to somewhere around 12 to 16 dollars.

[gamer0004]

In that case you are absolutely right.

[Morpheus]

I think the gas prices might be a little low for the time, if indeed its the same gas as we know it now and not some future type of fuel like bio-diesel as predictions are that by the time the game is set (2050s) then oil would have ran low in supplies and should have pushed prices very high and encouraged people to use alternate sources instead of thinking about different fuel sources to use and still using oil by products for the time being...maybe I am reading too much into this.

[chris the cynic]

I would caution against trying to project forward using only real world information simply because Deus Ex has some things that would change alter that quite a bit. The biggest example being that in the late 2030s the world population had been reduced by plagues so much it was smaller than it had been in the late 1930s. So we can expect it to be around 2 billion or lower at that point. That would throw a serious wrench into any forward projection that didn't specifically take the massive die off into account.

That said, fuel is definitely scarce in the world of Deus Ex, the continuity bible has this to say: "It's still possible to hail a cab (though it may be a horse-drawn one since fuel supplies tend to be routed to the wealthier areas)."

[Morpheus]

I would caution against trying to project forward using only real world information simply because Deus Ex has some things that would change alter that quite a bit. The biggest example being that in the late 2030s the world population had been reduced by plagues so much it was smaller than it had been in the late 1930s. So we can expect it to be around 2 billion or lower at that point. That would throw a serious wrench into any forward projection that didn't specifically take the massive die off into account.

That said, fuel is definitely scarce in the world of Deus Ex, the continuity bible has this to say: "It's still possible to hail a cab (though it may be a horse-drawn one since fuel supplies tend to be routed to the wealthier areas)."

Your right, never thought to check references to the DX Bible which would be the place to go to.

[nerdenstein]

I had a play with the 02_NYC_Underground map using your suggestion of adding more tunnels and accidently created a BSP Hole due to me adding a chainlink fence infront of it. I'll try again.
I was also thinking, do you want to expand the levels slightly or just add additional detail? For the back entrance, (the one with the lasers) parhaps adding a few tunnels before even reaching the lasers and base entrance. Could also add a single patrolling guard.
For the front entrance, adding a small sewer area and then a ladder leading down to the big pit area that Alex says isn't on his Sewer map. For anyone who's played the PS2 version, I was considering mapping an area from that; viewtopic.php?f=6&t=10193&hilit=Deus+Ex+PS2 (8th Post, Last image) That could be an area before the pit area.

Oh course, I'm not a great mapper but I'll give it ago.

[Nameless Voice]

I think expanding the missions is outside the scope of this project. The changes should be cosmetic only, nothing gameplay changing.

[nerdenstein]

Agreed. Part of that was because I couldn't actually get it looking the way I wanted anyway so I scrapped the idea.

But yes, I realise that it added too much to the map and that isn't what we want in this project.

[OCELOT525]

a major bug in the Ton hotel:



HQ screenshot:
http://laluloland.awardspace.biz/DX/deusEX.html

I noticed this already in 2003 while playing dx for the first time.
This will be a bitch to fix...

[Renmazuo]

This will be a bitch to fix...

Oh that's nothing. By 2052 the combination of draconic zoning laws and severe overpopulation has necessitated the invention of entryways which bend space-time so that every map change you're essentially entering a parallel dimension. Move along, nothing to see here.

[DaveW]

I always knew about Deus Ex's strange concept of indoor/outdoor scale but I never thought about that window. Not sure we'd be able to fix that without moving Paul's Room around, which would be feasible (there's no other room in the way, except the drug den further down the hall) would probably be out of our scope. Unless people think it's worth fixing.