Mods that you've had ideas for that failed

[Morpheus]

I was thinking of a mod I was working on before but failed:

It was a mod that implemented:

ATMs that you could put money in and it gained interest through maps so when you went back onto your account, you had more money than you started with

Spider bot grenades, when they were used, one mini spider bot came out of them, like DX2 spider bot grenades.

LAMs that stuck to any surface the right way, spawned a laser from the center of them that acted like a trigger so they blew up if anyone triggered that. I only managed with help to get the grenades to stick and arm when lan on any surface, they even land the right way round, but the laser I was not sure how to do. I even made a "LAM Launcher" that launched these LAMs

"Universal Storage" it accessed a map that was a kinda storage area, so player could store items between maps and get them back. You entered the correct user name and password on a special computer and press "Go to storage" and you teleported to the storage area, then with a button in that map, you could "Log out" and teleport back to last map you were on. The problem I had with this was I did not know how to get the storage map to recognise the last map you were on and teleport you back to the exact location you were at before. (At the computer terminal)

"Wood Bomb" these grenades destroyed all furniture in the area they explode in. Never really saw a good use for this one

Made a custom zone so when you enter that zone, custom text displays saying "You are now in...." whatever the message was and you could have different music for this zone to, so say you have a large map and have a disco in same map and you did not want the disco as a separate map, when you enter it, the music changes and text displays saying "You are now at the disco, enjoy yourself" but with the DXOgg, I did not know how to modify the zone to get custom ogg files to play instead of UMX ones.

I had a few other things that I never finished like MP inventory belt for single Player, having medkits and biocells automatically activate when you lose the right amount of energy or health. Also a zoomable scope so you don't just zoom in the full way, but choose how you zoom in x2, x4, x6 etc...

Some other things I kinda forgot

[SimonDenton]

Drivable helicopters and boats, in fact.

Which made me laugh when I read it, coz that's exactly as far as I'd consider taking it: boats effectively travel in two dimensions only, so it kinda works with the collision cylinder system, and helicopters travel in unrestricted three dimensions with added bonus of ASPLODE if they hit anything, which also works with the collision cylinder system.

It's f****ing cars that are the problem.

Sorry I am not experienced that much with that stuff. yet!

What is the problem with cars? Why can't they work like boats or something?

[DDL]

Right, well your average boat will never, for example, be powering up a hill, because water plain doesn't work that way.

So for all intents and purposes, a boat can be considered to only move in 2 dimensions, X and Y. Moving in these two dimensions in the unreal engine is piss-easy: pushing a crate is an example of doing just that. Easy easy peasy. Now, can you push a crate up a slope? Hell no.

Vertical movement is tricky, and more importantly, constrained vertical movement is tricky. CONVINCING vertical movement is really, really hard, and not really workable in the unreal build DX is based on: pushing a crate up a hill, or indeed (more relevantly) driving a car up a hill really requires the object to tilt to match the hill, which not only completely fucks the collision illusion (which forces you to use a vertical cylinder, always, at all times), but would require at the very least four continual downward traces (i.e. from each corner) to get the height of the ground and rearrange the car over the surface accordingly. And then when you get, say, to the crest of a sharp hill, what then? You'd need extra traces down from internal elements of the base of the object to get the actual top of the hill or the car would simply trace all down the sides of the hill and not find the top, meaning your car would appear to pass through the crest of the hell.

And so on.

Within the bounds of an entirely Z-axis constrained environment, drivable cars would be..well, basically drivable boats on land, but outside of that rather artificial constraint? Fuck, I wouldn't touch that coding without eight beers inside me.

[SimonDenton]

lol good explanation Doc

Another mod of mine that died was that you were knocked out, and when you wake up you're in the slums. Meeting the inhabitants, you find that a police enforced group isusinglethal fore to control the land, more like the Taliban but softer. The inhabitants have a secret HQ, in which they need yu to constantly go back and forth helping them with their resources to fight back.

[DaveW]

[Jonas]

Pfft yeah nice Photoshop, Dave

[Dead-eye]

^^ (The one above Jonas): Apparently someone drank 8 beers.

Yeah I had an idea for a mod once it was called Deus Ex 2. I started work after IW came out and gave up after I realized UnrealED v1.0 is shit... No offense.

[YeomanTheCastle]

Deus Ex: Prequel: I was going to make a few playbale missions and lots of cinematics showing the storylines of the background on characters like Jocks time in Area 51 and what he saw, the Dentons growing up and the founding of Majestic 12 and UNATCO etc... This only ever was an idea, never got off the ground

There IS Hints of Corruption...

[Jetsetlemming]

Recently I had an idea for making a defense game in Deus ex. You'd have a central building you had to defend, and DX enemies would randomly spawn and move through a maze trying to get underneath your building and hurt it. If your building reached 0 health (ie 20 enemies reached the trigger underneath it and despawned ) an explosion would go off through the whole thing, killing you. Every time you killed an enemy, you'd get some credits, which you could use via salesmen set up in booths at the back of the building to unlock new weapons, new floors and windows to shoot from, new faster methods of transportation, speed and targetting and night vision augs, turn on lights in the maze, block off routes to make enemies take longer, spawn lams in the maze etc. I know I can get all of this shit working in Deus Ex, and I was actually at the point where I was making the map.... but I had a case of the retards and started manipulating vertices before saving, crashed Ued, and lost the whole thing. I slammed my fists on my desk, cried for a bit, and abandoned the whole thing.

[YeomanTheCastle]

Well, that sucks, oh well. It was a good idea.

I was thinking...
You are this guy called (YOUR NAME)
You wake up in a space station after six months for augmentations.
It is invaded by terrorists.
Will you escape?
Will you kill their leader?
Will you stay and die?
Your choice.

BUT there was one problem:

I have ZERO (NONE NOUGHT ZILCH) experience at modding.

[SlySpy]

I've had a few ideas for mods a long time ago.

One of my first was going to be set in the DX universe and one of the missions was to be based on the conspiracy of the underground alien/government base in Dulce, New Mexico. I was also going to include the supposed flash guns that were supposed to be standard issue weapons at the base.

I had another idea of doing a survival horror zombie mod. Speaking of which, I recall finding a german site many years ago with pictures of a german zombie mod for DX. Anyone know what happened to that? It looked like it was going to be good.

[Jonas]

I believe you're talking about The Reborn. They gave up because it was too much work, I think.

[Jetsetlemming]

Given how much trouble HDTP had with animations, I can see why.
Personally, if I were to try to make Deus Ex horror, I'd base it around giant Karkians in the dark.

[Jonas]

It looked like they'd got REALLY far though, that's why it attracted our attention. We were talking to them about how they'd handled character animation, but it turned out they'd done it the hard way: With a couple of semi-professional animators and lots of hard work. It was a shame they folded, but I guess they got tired of the old engine.

[Jetsetlemming]

You know if you wanted to be really lazy about it, you could just take some regular old NPCs, reskin them to look dead, then give them a special "NPCZombie" weapon that is just a combat knife or something like that with the skin missing so it looks like they're clawing at you empty handed, then (again) put them in the dark.
I think the giant karkian is still a scarier concept, though.