Question for the devolopers...

[SolidSnakePlissken]

when this is released will it come with a SDK? or will we have to make one ourselves? Only reason I ask, Is I want to create an in game character or alternate outfit for JC that is Solid Snake. I know some of you will say blasphemy, but I like Solid Snake more than JC so kiss my ass its my preference, besides it is a role playing game and you can even change your name but I want the name and the look, so far I have modded him into San Andreas and New Vegas, I am not really familiar with modding any other games besides those and I gave up on San Andreas a while ago, mainly because of the broken AI, the game was just to easy, now New Vegas is a brilliant game, I only wish it had cars like GTA... that aside, I just want to know what it would take to make this happen? Because I want it in al HD like your guys except Snakes face, maybe even keep JC's outfit just because it's so badass but if you guys aren't cool with that I could redue the outfit to reflect Snake, but I would rather change the head only IDK what do you guys think? Also will you guys be fixing the broken AI in Deus Ex? Some people say it isn't broken but I beg to differ, it could use a little tweaking, btw if not no big deal, and also I was wondering is there anyway you guys could change the camera view when you talk to something more like Human Revolution? One thing I hated about Deus Ex was the constantly changing camera view it always felt unnecessary idk maybe its just me, but I love the way Human Revolution does it...

P.S. you guys are awesome with the first release alone and all the other mods out there have really continued the lifespan and replay yalue of the game and I think alot of people don't appreciate that, and I am not one to complement people on there work because honestly alot of peoples work in the modding world in general suck ass, besides Black Mesa and the cinematic mod, you guys are the best I have ever seen, and I been looking forward to your new release. Just saying though June 26, 2012 is the 12 year anniversary, I would love to play it that day, or sooner but that day sounds good to me for some reason...

[justanotherfan]

Sweet, yeah. I didn't play more than a few minutes of MGS (Diazepam?) but Snake was cool, and DX needs more player skins.

DX has an SDK, Ion Storm released. I'm told HDTP will be open and free enough to mod (FAQ Q. #8), so while I'm not a modder or HDTP, I can say that the answer to such questions is almost certainly yes.

I liked the camera in DX; without it, I'd never see JC. Sometimes I'd see him in a mirror, and think "Oh right, that's me!", but it is different from many FPS games. Not sure if that could be modded, but I'd encourage trying.

HDTP isn't doing AI. I remember Jonas talking about handling AI in TNM, but I bet that the stupid is hardcoded.

Mods do generally suck. I'm not a modder, and mods I played in the past were stupidly buggy or incomplete. HDTP released once, so I rationally keep the faith, but waiting is disheartening too. TNM released something unbelievable as a "mod", so I give great respect there.

[Jonas]

Hate to quell your fire, but putting new character models into DX is pure anguish. The game doesn't use skeletons for animation, so you have to redo all character animations by animating the vertices. If you know what this means, I imagine you're banging your head against your desk right now. If you don't, figuring it out is almost certainly going to be too much work, sorry to say.

The AI in Deus Ex is actually not hard-coded. The path-finding is in the source code, so we can't change that, and that's the foundation of many of DX's problems. All of the AI stimuli and top-level behaviours are done in UScript, but that doesn't necessarily make it easy to fix. We did a lot of little things with it in TNM, but to "fix" the AI, you'd pretty much have to strip out everything and redo it all from scratch - and if you want that to take effect in Deus Ex itself, you'd have to go over every single map and reconfigure all the individual settings of every NPC.

[DDL]

Hah, Jonas took the words out of my mouth.

Still, when we're done, the plan is to release all the assets used for HDTP so that people can presumably modify and recompile things should they so desire. While this won't help you make a new mesh, it would presumably make something like a reskin (same mesh, different texture) far easier.

Regarding AI tweaks, like Jonas says, the AI is certainly tweakable, but is hamstrung by a variety of unmodifiable elements that you really can't circumvent. More "HDTP-specifically", the entire purpose of the project is to make nicer models and textures: we're leaving the actual gameplay mechanics entirely alone. Firstly because this is waaaay outside our remit, and secondly because gameplay alterations open a HUUUGE can of worms: a brief wander through the DXediting section of this forum will give you an idea as to how varied the general opinion is of what constitutes a 'bug', and that's just bugs. Changing actual gameplay elements that are not even actually broken per se would be even more divisive.

But, as noted above, we'll be releasing all the assets used, including the modified deusex.u source, so people can stick their own changes in and recompile should they so desire.

Also, I never thought I hear someone say "if only the DX camera was like HR's camera".. O_o

[Lexx]

Guess he means the cover-system, as the only moment in DX1 where you see JC is either in cutscenes or in a mirror. :p

[SolidSnakePlissken]

yeah what I meant was that the camera view during the dialog scenes are well lets face it there flawed, I like the ones in human revolution, they are not so "zoomed out" looking like the original is...