Opinions on the different versions of System Shock 2? Which one do you prefer?

[678b7f3f9e549Brisk]

The only possible explanation I can come up with is that Brisk here doesn't understand what "revert" means, so instead of looking it up he's trying to guess from context.

I understand completely. Apparently it's you that that doesn't understand that others may have a differing opinion on how a game should be played "for the first time". SS2 in it's current state isn't fundamentally broken without mods. All warts and imperfections aside, I don't think I've ever come across that strong of an opposing opinion to a vanilla playthrough for a first timer. You do you though.

[678b7f3f9e82dvoodoo47]

SS2 in it's current state isn't fundamentally broken without mods.

this does put a smile on my face.

[678b7f3f9eadcBrisk]

this does put a smile on my face.

It's playable from start to finish. Reviews these days don't leave too much buried. When games have major bugs they are full of users wailing and leaving low scores en masse. So even if you discount my opinion, any store page for the game solidifies my point.

Mods have value, that's why I'm here when wanting to return to the game after several years but I don't think that I will ever agree that a first time player should experience an altered version of any game from what the devs initially intended.

It's a different story if the community has to step in to patch say a problem that prevents progression or completion but that isn't the case here.

[678b7f3f9ec01voodoo47]

yes, that is probably the most amazing SS2 feature - you actually can complete the vanilla game. considering the amount of things that work only by accident..

so yeah, SCP. doesn't matter what your deal is.

[678b7f3f9ef7esarge945]

I don't know about anyone else, but I care a lot more about a game being fun and interesting than I do about technically being able to reach the end screen.

Even if vanilla SS2 wasn't a buggy mess, so many of the skill builds are borderline useless that it undermines a lot of the fun of the game.

SCP+something like RSD is a good way to go, even for newer players, but SCP will get you most of the way there on it's own.

Also, why the intense burning hatred for anything pixelated? It's either pixels or intense blur, pick your poison. The fact that I explain how to make your game pixelated in an optional section doesn't make my guide bad.

[678b7f3f9f2a1ZylonBane]

I'm sensing just a tad bit of bias here.

Bias toward what?

[678b7f3f9faf8JDoran]

No need for PM's. I will be open about it.

Over the last year, I have been working on a new modern version of GMDX, based off vRSD, mostly focusing on QoL changes, but there are some big gameplay enhancements in there too. The changelog is absolutely huge and there's some really big improvements (Lay-D Denton support, The removal of HDTP as a hard requirement, a significant belt and user experience overhaul, and much more). This keeps the gameplay largely intact while improving it in some areas I felt were still unbalanced/unpolished. This won't be the disaster that was GMDX v10.

If you're interested in learning more, or even testing it for yourself (it's not quite ready for release), I'm mainly sharing it with the Deus Ex channel on RoSoDude's Discord server - it started out as a minor mod to vRSD to allow the laser sight to stay on whenever you put away your weapon, but it grew into something much, much more significant since then. You're welcome to join and try it out if you want to. I need testers.

Some of the new QoL features:

• Huge overhaul of the belt mechanics (including many fixes for the very broken Invisible War toolbelt option), including the ability to disable autofill and enable double-click unholstering.
• The ability to toggle on/off every HDTP object individually, or to not use HDTP at all, with many HDTP exclusive features (skin colours for first person models, crossbow bolt skins, etc) being given Vanilla-friendly alternatives.
• "Belt Memory", which will reserve a specific belt slot when you run out of a particular item
• Laser Sights no longer deactivate permanently whenever you holster your weapon or mantle anywhere, now it auto re-enables itself when the weapon is re-equipped
• "Searched" labels on corpses and darkening of DataCube screens when read
• A fully dynamic crosshair showing only a dot when you have nothing equipped
• The ability to use the number keys in dialog windows
• The ability to use HUD Colours in dialog windows
• A full menu to toggle which items you take from corpses, to replace GMDX's janky "Decline Knives" option (this is similar to what Deus Ex Transcended offers, but in my opinion, is implemented better from a UI standpoint, since it's built into the Inventory menu, whereas the Transcended feature uses a separate list menu)
• Much, much, much more

Some of the gameplay changes:

• Cameras and turrets which are hacked will reset after a certain time (usually 3/4/5 minutes based on hacking skill), rewarding using Multitools and making hacking generally less overpowered.
• A bunch of new perks
• The Rifle Grenade doesn't require reloading to switch to/from, allowing using it in combat
• Plasma damage normalised (now it's always torso damage) to make it more reliable and less instant-kills on the player and enemies. Plasma feels far more satisfying to use overall.
• Significant Augmentation rework (currently in progress). Most passive augs have been given an "energy reservation" system to increase depth and tactical decision making.
• Putting a scope or laser sight on the GEP gun requires an Advanced-level perk, since they provide full rocket guidance, making the lock-on system useless and making the GEP ultra overpowered.
• Dragons Tooth Sword damage increased from vRSD where it was weak, but it requires recharging with biocells to use (you get about 50 hits on a full charge)
• Several new playthrough modifiers including No Keypad Cheese, Enemy Weapon randomisation, and more.
• Many other little adjustments and tweaks for balance

Brilliant, another way to play through Deus Ex whilst keeping it from getting stale  . Temporary hacking is a great idea, and it's always interesting to see new or rebalanced augs. Making the Dragon's tooth energy dependant might prevent some people (me!) from scumming it, or add a more strategic approach to it, depending on the player.

I don't think I've ever put a scope on the GEP gun, come to think of it.

I would love to help beta test it, but I'm afraid I can 't at the moment (I am working extra hours, doing the work of 2.5 people - the place I work at is a mess at the moment, fun fun fun), sorry. Still, it's better than being unemployed (looking for a job is soul destroying, I find).

[678b7f3f9fdb0Brisk]

right now, at this very moment, the fixed models are redundant if you have SCP. but if I stick the fixed rec counter object in there tomorrow.. not anymore.

Was there an update to this that never got posted to the thread or was it put on the backburner?

[678b7f3f9feadvoodoo47]

maybe.

[678b7f3fa00aeBrisk]

maybe.

Okay?

[678b7f3fa03d2Join2]

No need for PM's. I will be open about it.

Over the last year, I have been working on a new modern version of GMDX

Oh cool, things went quiet with you guys for a while. thought it might have been abandoned.
I'm curious, what was wrong with the alternate toolbelt option? I used it from time to time and don't recall any issue, but wouldn't be surprised if there was something I overlooked or forgot to get around to.

[678b7f3fa0c75sarge945]

Oh cool, things went quiet with you guys for a while. thought it might have been abandoned.
I'm curious, what was wrong with the alternate toolbelt option? I used it from time to time and don't recall any issue, but wouldn't be surprised if there was something I overlooked or forgot to get around to.

In most cases, it was inconsistencies or annoyances, not necessarily outright bugs, but here's a brief list of what I changed/fixed.

Just a recap for how the belts work in GMDX:

With the vanilla belt option, you press a keyboard button (or use the mousewheel) to select an item on the belt. If you scroll the wheel, your character will switch to whatever you scroll to instantly. The belt also has 2 highlights - a white outline, and a grey background. The gray background always shows what's currently in your hands, and the white outline shows what you have currently scrolled to. Most of the time these will be the same, but while scrolling, you will see the white outline move between slots with your mouse, with the grey background following along as your character finishes their put-away animation for their previously selected item. Nice and simple.

With the Invisible War toolbelt, scrolling the mouse-wheel doesn't change what is selected, instead it denotes a "primary selection" on your belt, which remains forever until you scroll to something else. Right-clicking will always deselect whatever you had previously selected, and will equip the item in the primary slot. The number keys can be used to select items in any belt slot, but it will not update the primary selection (that can only be done with the mouse wheel), which allows you to, for instance, press 3 to select a lockpick, pick a door, and then right-click to go back to your primary selection (usually your main weapon), which makes for some very nifty belt usage.

Overall, it's a pretty nice system, but there were some problems and some inconsistencies with the vanilla belt in v9, most of which got carried over into vRSD, and some features of it's design irked me and made it feel clunky/hard to use:

• The currently selected item in the belt would be lost upon loading a save game, so it displays as nothing selected. Your actual primary selection was remembered, so right-clicking would still select the specific slot you had previously scrolled to, but the belt on the HUD wouldn't show anything selected. This has now been fixed and it displays properly after loading a save game.
• The IW toolbelt would not respect the "double-click holstering" setting. Now it does. Additionally, having "double click holstering" enabled now also requires double-clicking to unholster.
• The wheel could be used to scroll to empty belt slots, which was inconsistent with the vanilla belt which skips empty slots. Now it always skips empty belt slots.
• The white outline and the grey background were always tied together with the invisible war toolbelt at all times. Unlike with the vanilla belt, where white outline shows your intended selection and the grey background shows your current selection, with the invisible war toolbelt, there was no separation at all, the white outline and grey square always followed the "primary" selection. Selecting another slot with the number keys wouldn't show anything on the belt, which was bad for providing visual feedback. Now, the grey background shows which slot is your "main" slot, and the white outline follows whatever is currently selected. So for instance if Belt Slot 2 is my primary selection, but I press the 4 button to select a lockpick, the gray square will remain on slot 2, while the white outline will appear around slot 4.
• Right-Clicking with the Invisible War toolbelt enabled with nothing in your hands would draw the item in your primary belt slot. With the Vanilla toolbelt enabled, right-clicking with nothing selected would do nothing. Now, right-clicking will always equip the item in your last selected belt slot (vanilla) or your primary selection (Invisible War), regardless of which belt you're using.
• Right-clicking while having something other than your primary selection equipped would switch back to your primary selection. This was useful sometimes, but most of the time when I right click to put away something, I want to put it away. Now, right-clicking will always put away whatever is in your hands, rather than going back to your primary selection. If you prefer the old behaviour, the IW toolbelt option now has a "classic mode" which once again makes right click always select your primary selection when something else is equipped.
• Double-tapping a number key will now denote that slot as your primary selection
• There were a lot of other little inconsistencies with the different belt options, all of which have been fixed.

Additionally, some of the other systems had some problems that made the belt less useful in general. Being able to left-frob doors and keypads to select a lockpick or multitool was a great addition, because it meant I didn't have to add these items to my belt anymore and could use those slots for weapons or other things. But there was a problem - there was no way to see how many of each tool I had left without going to my inventory, which was annoying. To remedy this, the tool windows were updated to show the amount you have vs the total needed, for instance, a keypad might say

Code: [Select]

Lock Strength: 20% (1/2 Tools)
Which shows me that I only have 1 of the 2 multitools required.

GMDX had a lot of really cool, useful quality of life additions, but many of them were clunky or didn't work well together. Now, everything should be nicely integrated and work well together. Left frobbing on doors combines well with the new tool display, being able to turn off belt auto fill works great with the new belt memory feature, left frobbing automatically selecting the nano key combines well with the new feature to make belt slot 0 available to general items, etc. It's all been slightly changed or made more consistent so it all works well together, and this includes the IW tool belt.

[678b7f3fa0e52Join2]

I dont agree with a sizable portion of that, e.g double click holstering adding even more clicks to now unholster. The feature was quality of life solely to prevent missclicks, such as putting away your weapon when attempting to frob tiny buttons in the heat of combat, which had a non-negligible rate of occurrence especially in the case of some dodgy interaction collisions. Adding extra clicks for the reverse would deter me from the option, having to commit to extra clicks any time I want to draw a weapon when it's not really necessary as there's no notable conflict of function/player intent in the reverse. You're putting something IN your hand, which is actually useful as opposed to nothing. But whatever, my work has clearly outlived me, I am now irrelevant, this is your fork and time to shine. I'll go back to my corner and wish you the best, anticipating the final result.

[678b7f3fa1091voodoo47]

Okay?

yes. now go play the game.

[678b7f3fa13b3Brisk]

yes. now go play the game.

Thanks for the update.

Will start once I'm through the "Enhanced Edition" of the first game. Currently finishing level 3.

Definitely a better experience than the "classic edition" that I last played but the GOG version seems to have stopped updates at 1.1.8 for what I'm guessing is until the micro stutter issue introduced in 1.2.16 that's on steam is fixed. However that would mean the "AI getting stuck on corners" bug isn't addressed. I haven't played the DOS version of the game in decades to draw a comparison from recent memory though.

Can anyone confirm if this is prominent or something that happens rarely under specific conditions? It doesn't seem to be occurring thus far in my play through to this point but again, I can't really remember how this performed in the DOS version. I remember enemies always moved slow in the earlier levels of the game and I tend to kill them before they have much of a chance to travel across a wall.

Maybe I'll have to fire up DOSBox and configure it to see if no one knows off the top of their head...

[678b7f3fa14cdsarge945]

It's prominent. SS:EE is extremely scuffed right now and probably will be forever.

[678b7f3fa1724Brisk]

It's prominent. SS:EE is extremely scuffed right now and probably will be forever.

Starting to lose faith in nightdive. They seem to leave the games they "remaster" in various states of unfinished instead moving on to the next shiny toy that they can cash in on. The last patch was 4 years ago...

Then there's the mess they left Blood in and issues with a few other games off the top of my head. It seems that community source port maintainers are the only ones that give a damn.

Not what one would expect from a commercial product they paid for.

[678b7f3fa183csarge945]

It's cute that you still think corporate re-releases of old games are anything other than cynical cash grabs.

[678b7f3fa1bc9JDoran]

Starting to lose faith in nightdive. They seem to leave the games they "remaster" in various states of unfinished instead moving on to the next shiny toy that they can cash in on. The last patch was 4 years ago...

Then there's the mess they left Blood in and issues with a few other games off the top of my head. It seems that community source port maintainers are the only ones that give a damn.

Not what one would expect from a commercial product they paid for.

I used to have high hopes for NightDive Studios. A software house that took old classic games, and updated them to run on modern systems, sometimes giving them extra functions and features, and even bringing those mostly PC-only games to console? To me, that was briliant. And they were going to be more open and conversational with their customers too.

And the games/updates/remasters that they do release are really good (at least the ones I have played, so no non-first person shooters) so fair praise to them for that. But that's where the good ends. NightDive seem to feel almost compelled to leave their games with unfixed bugs and glitches. and the company might as well not exist, as far as communicating with your customers is concerned. It's such a pity.

If anyone were to ask me now "Who is your favourite game developer", then I wouldn't have an answer, because to me (a fifty-four year old bloke, who has been video gaming since about 1980, starting with the very early arcade games such as Space invaders) the software industry has never been less interesting and less stale. So I would doubly love NightDive, for their reviving of old but classic games. But I just don't like NDS's "We're only doing it for the money' vibes.

[678b7f3fa1df9Brisk]

It's cute that you still think corporate re-releases of old games are anything other than cynical cash grabs.

Nah, more just stating what has transpired. Their CEO/studio head/whatever title he's going by today Stephen Kick talks a big game about what a huge fan he is of these old games and how he doesn't want to do wrong by them. Sadly his actions speak louder than his panderings.

[678b7f3fa2124Brisk]

I used to have high hopes for NightDive Studios. A software house that took old classic games, and updated them to run on modern systems, sometimes giving them extra functions and features, and even bringing those mostly PC-only games to console? To me, that was briliant. And they were going to be more open and conversational with their customers too.

And the games/updates/remasters that they do release are really good (at least the ones I have played, so no non-first person shooters) so fair praise to them for that. But that's where the good ends. NightDive seem to feel almost compelled to leave their games with unfixed bugs and glitches. and the company might as well not exist, as far as communicating with your customers is concerned. It's such a pity.

If anyone were to ask me now "Who is your favourite game developer", then I wouldn't have an answer, because to me (a fifty-four year old bloke, who has been video gaming since about 1980, starting with the very early arcade games such as Space invaders) the software industry has never been less interesting and less stale. So I would doubly love NightDive, for their reviving of old but classic games. But I just don't like NDS's "We're only doing it for the money' vibes.

What's even worse is that apparently the studio is/was having a tough time aquiring rights/licenses/permission to work on specific titles so Nightdive is considering going the unofficial route via community mods. However there is one catch, they want users to pay them for it... You know for the same work modders do for free in their spare time. If Nightdive can't even finish the work they start on officially sanctioned projects, who the hell would be dumb enough to expect they wouldn't just abandon a mod the minute a more lucrative contract is signed?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rziJq7btneE

[678b7f3fa2219sarge945]

Yep, SS:EE is still not fixed

[678b7f3fa23e3Join2]

Nightdive most certainly is not doing a lot of these games justice, and it's clear to me cash is more important than integrity to them, BUT sometimes they get it right or did in the past, and in a lot of cases it could be worse. We also cant expect perfection from anyone. I do not support them at all, consider them parasitic, and yet of all these shitheads remaking and remastering everything and ruining them in he process, well they're probably the best option. So many of my favorite games have been butchered in the new age, the list goes on and on, but Nightdive typically make a few missteps per game rather than ruining it entirely. Sad. But got to give credit where it is due. It could be worse, they're the best of a bad situation...

...they haven't got their hands on Deus Ex yet though. After that I imagine I wont put in any defense or backhanded compliment again, will just ignore them entirely.

No, I probably just gave more credit than is deserved. Many of these games didn't even need any remaster to begin with, and they should have instead moved to serious game dev if they were legit. I guess grabbing old licenses and shitting out minor updates (or downgrades) regardless of if they're needed or not is a better business model.

[678b7f3fa26dcJDoran]

What's even worse is that apparently the studio is/was having a tough time aquiring rights/licenses/permission to work on specific titles so Nightdive is considering going the unofficial route via community mods. However there is one catch, they want users to pay them for it... You know for the same work modders do for free in their spare time. If Nightdive can't even finish the work they start on officially sanctioned projects, who the hell would be dumb enough to expect they wouldn't just abandon a mod the minute a more lucrative contract is signed?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rziJq7btneE

If NightDive do go down that route (selling new patches for old games, rather than making new versions of old games) then that will remove the best thing (to me) about NightDive, them bringing old games to modern consoles. All the patches in the world for an old PC game won't make the game suddenly become available on the PS4. I don't know how much of NightDive's revenue comes from game sales on consoles as opposed to the PC, but I think it's fair to say that NDS won't want to throw away their console games' profits.

Plus it's NDS, so I really wouldn't feel too hopeful about giving them my money on their promise to produce a modernising patch for an old game that I love, then trusting them to produce a satisfactory patch within a reasonable time, and then releasing more patches to fix remaining bugs, NDS' past is against them here. At least when they actually release a game, then you can see what other gamers are saying about it, and then decide if it sounds worth your money.