Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Ace on November 21, 2003, 05:59:02 pm
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The Deus Ex 2 demo is out, but at the moment it's hosted at the evil fileplanet... :devil:
Anyway, even if it's half as good as Deus Ex 1, it'll be spectactular.
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w00000000000000000000000000000000t!!!!!!!!!!111
screw waiting for it to get to other servers... *downloads*
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Well I downloaded, I tried to install but failed (disk full) due to the fact that the demo copies itself to like 3 locations before actually installing the game. Then I cleared off some space and tried to install again. Well, apparently either my exe is corrupted (which its not, since I installed like 99% last time) or an previously installed version is messing the process up. Ok, so I do an unisyall, clean out the registry - the whole deal. Still no go. Oh yay. After spending like an hour trying to install it, I gave up. I'll try again later when my patience has returned.
From what I hear, I'm not missing much anyway. Tons of bugs, especially on ATI cards, and those who have played it more or less agree that is suffers from serious console-itis. But, we'll see. This could be one of th best games of the year, or it could just flop...we'll see.
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I'd say that they simplified a lot of things that probably shouldn't have been.
It is however fun, unlike some sequels... *cough* MOO3...
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Got it. Tried it.
Long story short-- feels like a leaked beta.
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It's quite odd. I enjoyed Deus Ex a fair bit but I'm not excited about the sequel in the least, nothing I've read has really made it stand out to me.
Now Thief 3, that game excites me.
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I'm very annoyed. My buddy Crash told me about the demo days before File Planet listed it. So there I was ready to pull it the moment it becomes available, and Fileplanet won't let me download ANYTHING.
ZB: do you have any specific criticism? I'd be happy to pass it on to Crash and co. at ISA.
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For those having problems with FilePlanet, by the way, Filerush (http://www.aixgaming.com/filerush/) has a .torrent up.
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After many hours of work, I finally installed it. But guess what, my video card isn't supported.
*mutters unitelligibley*
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Originally posted by ZylonBane
Got it. Tried it.
Long story short-- feels like a leaked beta.
graphics don't feel too crisp either..(seems a little...'fuzzy', maybe it's just me..:p)
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This calls for an immediate download methinks
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Originally posted by Rictor
Tons of bugs, especially on ATI cards,
methinks I'll wait a bit then.
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I like it, a lot.
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I actually can't play it. The game gives me VIKTORIA ERROR constantly. I'm going to ask Crash (oh how apropos that name is now) about it.
There are known issues with ATI cards and the shaders ISA wrote. Technically, they are written properly, but the microcode of the ATI cards doesn't parse them properly, according to the graphics guys at ISA.
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Originally posted by Ace
Anyway, even if it's half as good as Deus Ex 1, it'll be spectactular.
Its now where half as good as the Deus Ex demo, and i recall people hating that.
The interface has been "streamlined" to the extent where its utterly cretinus to use and feels like i should be navigating it with a joy pad............. infact the whole thing feels like a dodgy x-box to pc port of an average console fps.
Instead of having that patented "Spector" game world immersion and interactivity the game worlds been so streamlined its more like a FPS with "hold a button here to do stuff" bits tacked on. The removal of the lock picks the utterly stupid concept of all guns using a common ammo pool (was it because gamers are too stupid to manage different levels of ammunition for each gun? they could for deus ex 1 on the ps2 and every other FPS ever).
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Every message board I've seen talking about the demo, it's been getting reamed. Some of the more common complaints--
Unified ammo plus no reloads removes a lot of firefight tactics and makes it way too easy to piss away all your ammo.
No leaning.
Awkward interface, obviously ported straight from the X-Box.
Bad frame rates even on high-end hardware.
Screwy jumping-- you don't so much jump as levitate to a certain height, then fall.
Small levels.
AI glitches. Can shoot a friendly in the face 3 or 4 times before they turn hostile. Pathfinding bugs.
Tiny inventory-- 6 belt slots + 6 inventory slots. That's it!
Oversized text. It's huge! Obviously sized for TV play.
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Originally posted by ZylonBane
AI glitches. Can shoot a friendly in the face 3 or 4 times before they turn hostile. Pathfinding bugs.
Nice to see one thing hasn't changed. ;)
I spend the first third of the first game capping 'friendly' UNATCO troops to lift their inventory. :D Great way to get better gear early on. Exploiting the AI's inability to find its way around things like benches, boxes and trees was a wonderful way to pick them off from a distance.
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It's a bit dodgy and no mistake
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Apparently there are a few .ini tweaks that make the demo play a lot better.
Here are changes made to the default.ini
MouseLagThreshold is set to 75, should be 0 for PC
Engine cache is set to 1 change to 20
Set VolumetricLighting=True
Change FOV__d to 68
Set Use32BitTextures=True
Also some (if not all) of the .ini files are set to read only. These need to be changed otherwise configurations won't get saved.
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I am a big fan of the original.
This demo is terrible though.
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Originally posted by 01010
Apparently there are a few .ini tweaks that make the demo play a lot better.
I also found out, a lot of the PC GUI parts are remarked out in the demo. So most of the interface is using the X-Box one.
It's a rushed demo, but it is better then no demo... *cough* MOO3...
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Originally posted by Ace
it is better then no demo... *cough* MOO3...
I sense burning resentment... :D
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yep the demo wasn't that good. It was... "nice" to play though so I don't loose my hopes yet.
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Originally posted by Gortef
yep the demo wasn't that good. It was... "nice" to play though so I don't loose my hopes yet.
yeah, the demo offerred two choices, strike a deal, and kill 'em all... the latter is actually quite easy because the ai is dumb enough to investigate a supposedly "Haywire" turret under your control:lol:
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Originally posted by Turnsky
yeah, the demo offerred two choices, strike a deal, and kill 'em all... the latter is actually quite easy because the ai is dumb enough to investigate a supposedly "Haywire" turret under your control:lol:
What is nice though, and why despite interface shortcomings I have a lot of hope for the full game, is how in a short 10 minute demo of a 20 hour game, there's tons of ways of doing the two choices.
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Talked to my buddy at ISA.
Originally posted by ZylonBane
Unified ammo plus no reloads removes a lot of firefight tactics and makes it way too easy to piss away all your ammo.
Evidently, this was a core design decision made before the game had an Xbox deal. This makes me sad. There's no plans to change that.
Awkward interface, obviously ported straight from the X-Box.
Screwy jumping-- you don't so much jump as levitate to a certain height, then fall.
Oversized text. It's huge! Obviously sized for TV play.
Tiny inventory-- 6 belt slots + 6 inventory slots. That's it!
The interface is "so totally going to be patched" if Eidos gives them permission. There was a list of things that needed to be changed from the Xbox version that were well documented. Someone simply failed to completely make the changes.
What really annoyed my friend was that the one shot kills were taken out. Again, it was a core design decision. He, like me, is of the opinion that this removes the whole idea of a stealth assassin.
Hopefully Thief3 doesn't abrogate the core principles of the franchise. My buddy is doing AI work for it, so we'll see how it goes.
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Deus Ex was a great game because it was developed with a more mature PC market in mind, it sold well on the PS2 because it was one of the few games to treat gamers as if they have a reasonable amount of intelligence.
Here it appears theyve started off from the get go trying to make a console game, dual development would have been best but clearly costs too much for all but the very big studio.
Clearly Eidos DIDNT learn from the success of the first game, they seem to not understand that people enjoyed the complexity it should have shown that console gamers and pc gamers are quite happy with "unstreamlined" gameplay.
Its a ****ing dissapointment.
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I've played the demo. and then I uninstalled it. If they get the real game to run bettar, I might buy it.
and too bad the ammo ran out when I met the second person on my killing spree.
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After apply the ini changes I've played it again and it was better.
Im aware that console games make more money and developers have to aim for them. But if this dumbing down is the price its not worth it.
Unified ammo I can understand, but no reload!
These are really cheap effective ways to add extra gameplay and more importantly, fun.
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Originally posted by Mr Carrot
Clearly Eidos DIDNT learn from the success of the first game, they seem to not understand that people enjoyed the complexity it should have shown that console gamers and pc gamers are quite happy with "unstreamlined" gameplay.
Its a ****ing dissapointment.
Microsoft had more of a design influence than Eidos. Eidos just published the game of Ion Storm Austin (though, to be fair they do get final say so on changes made to the game for the PC). Microsoft, on the other hand, has a tome about eight inches thick that documents what can and cannot be done in a game on the Xbox.
Neither company can be blamed though. The worst aspects of the demo mentioned so far are all a direct result of core design decisions made before they had made the decision to put it out on a console.
That's the real disappointment.
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What's really sad is that Billbox owners will buy bajillions of copies and make DX3 an inevitablity...
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I downloaded the demo yesterday. I didn't like the interface and the new HUD very much, but hopefully that's gonna be fixed. The demo itself had the right feel, but there are a few other things to say.
I was rather dissappointed with the graphics. Tey're not bad actually, but if you look on earlier development shots from the PC, they have better detail. It's obvious that the X-Box is responsible for downgrading the graphics. And the AI acts somewhat strange sometimes.
But I was baffled by the incompetence on the technical side. I checked the *ini file because of multiple troubles while playing it, and the demo was configured for running on the X-Box! I wonder if actually someone played the demo before releasing it.
They said that they develop the PC and X-Box parallel to each other. Sounds like a lie to me. Parts of the demo screams that it's a console port.
Console ports are in no way bad, if done properly. Just check GTA 3. After the console release Rockstar games spent months to rework the game and take advantage of the PC's superior hardware, and it has neither moronic interfaces nor a sluggish control sheme to deal with. That's the way it should be.
I hope that they don't mess up Thief 3.:nervous:
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I can confirm, beyond a shadow of a doubt, Lynx, that the Xbox version and the PC version were developed in parallel. The two are nearly identical anyway (lets face it, the machines are pretty damned close to each other).
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:rolleyes: That's normally the kiss of death....
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So, anyone here played the full version yet?
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Yes I have the full version. The art direction is very SystemShockish.
Tons of atmosphere, nice plot, sure the GUI and interface suck and at times the physics can be a little dodgy at times, but the sound system is great and it's fun.
Blackmarket biomods are awesome.
The overall length is about the same as Max Payne 2 if you're doing the main plot with no side quests or exploration.
When exploring a bit, and that's not completely. Seattle took me 8 hours and I'm moving on now. When running through the game for just the critical plot (my first time through) it was 6 hours long.
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just for the record, I beat MP2 in 4 hours.
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I would get this game but the demo ran pretty poorly on my machine even with most of the details turned down; guess it's time to upgrade the hardware first.
As with most of you, I had mixed thoughts about the demo. The plot sounds interesting, and it looks like there are strong ties with the original story. The weapons have much nicer effects than in the first game and the nonlinear gameplay and level design (i.e. multiple ways to get to various areas and to complete objectives) is all present. The graphics has all the Unreal Warfare goodness. That bloom graphical effect is very realistic, but makes most things look too blurry; good thing it can be turned off.
I actually spent nearly a hour finding out what the various characters in the demo say if you bump into them, throw objects at them and so on, since there are a lot of things they say for such events. As in the first game, there is some unintended comedy; pushing the large wooden plank things stacked along the walls of the greasel pit onto an NPC creates some wacky physics effects, same goes for dead bodies that get stuck in doors at certain angles and one time the SSC guards and Sak inexplicably got into a free-for-all fight with each other. :D
Most of my gripes have to do with the "streamlining" that has resulted in oversimplification of the game mechanics. The skill system was removed altogether, the aiming feature is gone (granted, the aiming was frequently too slow in the first game, but it was a good idea in principle and works well in other games), you just have the standard single health bar instead of six different health sections and everything in the inventory seems to take up the same space. The GUI is fine but everything looks too big and is placed poorly; this really seems like console influence. For example, the transmission text comes up almost in the middle of the screen and is shown in some ridiculously big 24-point font.
From what I have heard, there also isn't nearly as much text as before; the newspapers, emails, datacubes and so on were an excellent touch in the first game, and I spent a lot of time reading that stuff. Hardly any blood effects too, which seems rather unrealistic. I don't really mind the unified ammo, though (although it makes no sense from a realism perspective); in these games, I always tend to use only the weapons for which I have found more ammo than I can carry anyway.
Still definitely worth getting for me (once I get a better processor and video card), but it isn't up to the standards of the original.