There are tons of people that play single player....Do they not know that DX has MP?

chin.democ. wrote:I'm really sorry you see it that way Shadow, I just want to release work that I am happy with. It's all fun for me making maps, the day it isn't fun will be the day I stop. I don't see many people releasing maps these days and I think it's quite sad as we had great success with the mapping challenge two years ago for example. I hope we are still cool as I think we have worked well in a team before and we managed to create the Cozmo RPG v2 map - probably the greatest collaboration map the community has seen to date (although I'm hoping for Cozmo and Chees to take that crown off us soon).

To be honest, you were unrealistic, Cozmo 3 was your priority and time was burned up, 4 months before demo release was probably not the best time to turn your attention to it, after the map was mostly built to "not be happy with it" and it would have been good to let the team now this before you let the public know this.

If you had realized that Cozmo 3 was a bit pointless by comparison and that Hengsha was a PR opportunity, then there might have been enough time, but you were so busy thinking you were better and knew better that you missed the whole point of the project and spewed negative PR, didn't actually map Hengsha much and all it did was show that the community was divided and that the map could have been better. You just made the community look divided and stupid and unprofessional. We chatted for hours without any "not happy" from you, so it came as a bit of a surprise that you took this information and turned it around into a negative PR campaign, calling for "cancellation".

I wasn't going to undo months of work, simply because you had changed your mind and re-joined the project 3-4 months before deadline. There wasn't enough time to achieve your plan to change the map and that wasn't my fault either.

I guess it goes like this:

The portion that somehow preferred unpatched copy to updated or Goty simply are not aware of MP.

The portion that has MP patch probably sees empty servers when they idly check, and then they turn their focus back to SP/other games.

The portion that comes to MP servers will see activity in "fun"servers that are filled with little kids or are simply not very fun.

The portion that ends up in actual competitive servers is more likely to play 0augs, which has no connection with SP mechanics, so they loose interest fast.

The portion that manages to find aug server after 0augs will have to put up with extremely uncomfortable controls, and has to dig up their basic settings from maze of menus.

The portion that sticks around long enough for some reason or other and through all the previous crap will end up playing against veteran players and not all will take it well.

Then there is the small portion that stays even after that. I think we get an average 1 or 2 new steady players per year as of late.


Comment about Hengsa RP wonderful PR "opportunity" retracted. You'll eat your own soup sooner or later.

synthetic wrote:I guess it goes like this:

The portion that somehow preferred unpatched copy to updated or Goty simply are not aware of MP.

The portion that has MP patch probably sees empty servers when they idly check, and then they turn their focus back to SP/other games.

The portion that comes to MP servers will see activity in "fun"servers that are filled with little kids or are simply not very fun.

The portion that ends up in actual competitive servers is more likely to play 0augs, which has no connection with SP mechanics, so they loose interest fast.

The portion that manages to find aug server after 0augs will have to put up with extremely uncomfortable controls, and has to dig up their basic settings from maze of menus.

The portion that sticks around long enough for some reason or other and through all the previous crap will end up playing against veteran players and not all will take it well.

Then there is the small portion that stays even after that. I think we get an average 1 or 2 new steady players per year as of late.

"Slow and steady wins the race"

I have nothing against decently made mods, although I have to admit that seeing badly made or pointless (= no fun) content does urine me off somewhat.

In our situation there is not much point discussing mods at all, however. Mods' survival depends on game's survival. If your actual online game is dead, nobody will play your mod.
Exception to that is breaking free from mother game altogether, but only fraction of the games that follow this path have decent success. Urban Terror is Quake3A mod. Counter Strike is HalfLife mod. DoTA is WCIIIRoC mod. And then there are wonderful and unique multiplayer games such as Tremulous (Quake3A mod, inspired by Q2 mod) that even after decent media coverage struggle with player numbers similar to our 13 years old game.

In some cases, well-made mods can achieve success even next to classic servers, and drama that occurs then is comparable to atdm vs 0a standoff. UT99, Q3A, etc have some popular mods.

I've thought of what the people who assembled with the intent of creating a Community Based Patch might've imagined the game's future as. Or those behind MTL. Or what DerianX of N/A might've thought when he put together that prefab lib. The short-sighted pickering here does disservice to our legacy, to the modders that were here at launch. You people have forgotten your game, have forgotten how to distinguish a mod from original, have forgotten how to prioritize the obvious issues that everybody - including yourselves - are exposed to.

Those who want PVE are better off making SP mod that'll receive significantly more attention and players, or create co-op (does not equal multiplayer game).
If you are serious about PVE content, then you are better off working on newer engine and to ensure success you have to borrow heavily from currently popular PVE games, whatever they are. People usually also demand better graphics from PVE content, and you'll have to generate far more content than for a single player story. I have played various MMORPGs for total of around 7 years without doing PVP, so I am fairly familiar with PVE demands all the same.

Those who want an online FPS like the developers intended, should group up and discuss their options. There are some of us who are working right now to improve original DXMP, and couple of us that have put lot of effort into researching engine port opportunities. Both options are backed by some of the best coders in this community, but an actual port is a taunting goal if you have no people for it. As is fixing the mess DXMP launched as.

Alternatively, you can obviously just continue carrying on doing whatever it is that you are doing.


Also, it was suggested that SR posted this thread under the influence of alcohol and-or other substances. This is so far the best explanation I've heard, to what I saw in the opening post. Before re-shaping the online world, patching common sense might be in order.

I don't know what went wrong so badly in last 2 years that player count dropped so much. It never dropped so much in the history of DXMP yet.

Going to ramble about this, even though everyone already knows (summarising it I guess...)

I honestly think this game's playerbase grows and declines exponentially, due to it being pure PvP (which is why things were active last year but totally dead recently). But the real problem is that we're getting no new players. For years, people would pick DX up in a bargain bin, on a Steam sale or whatever, and would give the MP a shot (possibly for a lack of anything better to do) and then get hooked. These days, if someone does somehow end up trying DXMP, they don't stand a chance at all, especially in augs where people would rather use them for a streak while their teammates whine a-

I was about to write a load of crap, but what I'm really trying to say is that DXMP is far too difficult for new players and has become mostly metabolic end product these days anyway. Current older players are just bored. New guys have a choice of either being raped in augs, or bored to death in Iceworld. And if you're not Euro, you're pretty much screwed ping-wise. As stated ages ago by everyone, it needs to be totally remade and begin from scratch. A DXMP patch won't do anything, because some won't accept it, people who didn't like DXMP originally won't know about it, and it's generally too small to get any coverage (new players).

It won't be too difficult to create DXMP2 in Unity. UDK is too inconvenient - while BSP and original DX map conversions would be nice, UDK is extremely bloated (ever tried taking the Epic Games content out of UDK projects?) and doesn't do shooters very well. Not to mention it doesn't run on older machines. Also, we can just use brush to mesh conversion if we're going to be lazy. Unity is lightweight, runs well, can even be played in browsers Quake Live style (necessary because everyone has a low attention span) or just downloaded, etc etc etc.

Here's a simple example of a Unity MP shooter: http://www.kongregate.com/games/lizzard ... z-instagib

A lot of time would be saved by getting cooperation and using existing assets from HDTP, New Vision, custom GUI and so on. I've been thinking about this since earlier UDK builds in 2010, but I guess I'm just posting this because I won't have the time to do this myself for possibly years, if anyone wants to take the initiative on that first.

I am up for a game in style of dxmp. Whatever engine is used... I see the problem in artworkers only - there are simply not enough of them. It is enough to have 1 coder, but you need 30 artworkers.

Where as I see the opposite Deja lol I see little coders and plenty of art workers. Suppose it depends in what circles you run around in I guess

So is this something materialising from the grey mist of this thread?

Cozmo.. you list number of issues that are as much symptoms of critically low player base as they are issues that could be patched, but you then describe reasons against releasing that very patch, reasons that you'll encounter on a new engine all the same (such as advertising) - and this time without as much (if any) support from the single player. Then you suggest pure PVP is an issue on top of it.

With a patch, this game could fairly easily hit the numbers we saw decade ago. Today's games generally look for much bigger audience than that, in order to cover the costs and make profit. The state of the game right now is fairly irrelevant in terms of the gameplay concept devs had. The actual game died sometime in 2003 - I'd imagine the main reason for that was the amount of bugs and crappy content which the community couldn't fix as quickly as would've been needed. Objectively speaking, nobody was really at blame there.

With a port there are better chances of much bigger player base, and potentially even sales. However, it is much more time-consuming and depends on well-working team that can produce high quality content for today's hardware; understanding what exactly they are building is a necessity as well.


Those of you interested in improving the original DXMP (bugs and presentation, mainly +some sp material), contact me and we have a chat. Those interested in helping port the multiplayer, contact dejavu for information on what would be needed.

This is an attempt to list some issues in DXMP in a more concise manner. Depending whether it is a patch or a port, these issues would have to be fixed or learned from and avoided.

Code. DXMP is not only missing some typical MP features, but was and is poorly coded for online playing.

Textures. Didn't make use of full potential 13 years ago. New renderers add lot of potential that could be addressed. Secondly, DXSP was designed with appropriately stylish skins - MP completely lacks that. Full potential of atmosphere would also have to be explored, moreso than in the likes of UT, Quake, CoD, CSS.

Maps. Very poor (not to say utter crap). All of them. They should've hired an instructor from Epic. This is no brainer if you know the design of your game, as multiplayer movement tends to be typical and can be copied from other games just as well.

Gameplay. Devs got the idea right, but, barring the distinct lack of actual gametypes, it can probably adjusted slightly to reflect SP concepts better.


If one had to guess why this game died, the most obvious answer would be code, code, code, and again code. Then the maps. Gameplay itself suffers from some inconsistencies but that was hardly the killer blow.
I don't understand why some people say the game is hard to play, though. It is not much harder than any other game, if you set your buttons up from game menu. The fact that devs did not add proper aug buttons for DXMP is yet another screwup, though. Hardly time-consuming. At the same time, they gave you a keyboard buttons menu that you can modify. Who'da'thunk, eh?

Additional note about PVE: if you want online PVE, you need to sit down and think about how you are going to keep your PVE players for even a month, not to mention a year. PVP games usually keep same players for years. I can imagine Deus Ex MMO work out, but.. but. 100x more work is probably a humble estimate.

Additional additional note, about mods: port team has to figure out clearly what they are going for, but in the current scene there are two issues with mods. First of all, some people don't seem to understand very clearly what qualifies as DXMP, and what qualifies as mod. Nothing good comes out of it if you forget in the middle of street where your home is. Second issue is the lack of quality-awareness. Certainly a thing you build is gradually shaped from something primitive, but lot of modders seem to settle with half-finished half-assed product and think they are done. If a mod is bad, better mods are preferred, but if a game is bad, better games are preferred.

I'm going to be honest here. Why is it important to save/recreate DXMP? If it wasn't/isn't good then why go through the trouble? I participated in DXMP because I liked making mods for it. But I can mod for other games with a more lively community. I also liked 0A, Altfire, and RPG servers. I can get a more enjoyable experience from other FPS games. Augs was really the only thing that made DXMP unique and I wasn't much of an augger. Perhaps the next Deus Ex will have multiplayer.

Surprisingly smart post, but a bit poor question (no pun intended); not to mention you partly answered it yourself.

Deus Ex story themes are increasingly relevant today, and more and more shooters look like DXMP should've looked like. Likewise, the game mechanics used have not died either. Also, there is no game 'quite' like DXMP out there, *yet*. Games like Crysis get closer with every release, however.
You say augs was the only thing that made DXMP unique, and there is your quarter of an answer. Combine that with skillpoint system. That was not all that made Deus Ex special, and that is not all that even standard MP has to be limited to.

You say you weren't much of an augger. This means that you didn't like DXMP much. Now there may be a ton of reasons why, but bottom line is that you don't know why DXMP fan likes DXMP. Do not get me wrong, I do not hold it against anyone if they simply didn't like some game or another - I don't like ton of games, ie WoW - but it is a bit cheeky to ask such a question, even more so given its rhetoric flavour.
I'll answer you: there are variety of effective ways to play DXMP, skill points are upgraded depending not only on style but often on the situation on the map; same with augs, to an extent. As DejaVu stated recently: other FPS shooters depend on aim accuracy, reflexes, in DXMP you need brains. I've seen a player play entire CMD map doing nothing but throwing LAMs one by one through the roof. He got the top score that map. You can play heavies effectively, lowtech, pistols, rifles. Even with all the balancing issues and bugs, you can do that. Even if some theoretical possibilities are poorly executed in practice, the game is awful lot of fun to play. And that you don't know. These days not many do.

It is a shame such a question even needs to be answered, but perhaps it was answered when MTL was no longer updated.

You say you also liked 0a, SG, AltFire, RPGC. Those are mods. People had fun in Bowen's, GODZ's, DXAG (my fav mod) as well, and today in AvH. Multiplayer games with editing tools tend to have some minor mods. It is a mistake to represent it as DXMP, but a possibility to go standalone and make a name for itself. Another matter is why someone would play a mod that doesn't put anything new on the table. Some mods should just remain mods. Something you can occasionally play alongside main game.

Some here might think I am waging somekind of holy war against mods and PVE content. I am a Deus Ex fan first and foremost.

Multi-player games, not games with multi-player mode, need to provide content that justifies playing it online. PVE takes stupid amount of work, money, time, to make it work in a manner that a player would love to play it for a long time. In online games you not only establish connection with the content you are playing, but also with other players, creating a very dynamic experience, but that won't happen if the content is pointless. Persistent online PVE is generally explored by MMOs, and here is a little quote for you:

That means, on a 100M budget (typical for a mid to top end MMO these days), and a 20 zone game, you are spending about 3.5 million dollars a zone.

Any alternative non PVP or partially PVP online game that is not MMO would be either mod-level smallstuff that hangs on some bigger game, or nothing short of revolutionary. One thing is sure, revolutionary or not, practically nobody will want to play it on DX1 (UE1) engine.

For shooters, it is different. Plenty players don't mind average or outright poor graphics if game-play itself is tweaked to provide lot of fun. Those players stay for a year, two years, five years, some crazy nutters revisit the game 10 years into it. This amount of time is not unheard of when it comes to MMOs, but usually requires constant content patches on top of initial costs.

If there is a shiny shooter DXMP on new engine, there is no doubt people would like it, and play it. If it is not polished to player preference, it fails, no matter how shiny or time consuming it was to build. UT3, hello. Shooter players would choose a better functioning game in a blink of an eye, and this has been shown through many expensive examples. Part of the reason Epic is stonewalling enthused UT99 coders as much as it can.

When a friend approached me with a suggestion that we might be able to get down and dirty with our old game and get something done, I had to think why on earth anyone would play a game on an ancient engine. Some of the above-mentioned points provide some reassurance - and, after all, DXSP itself is still played. So I believe there is hope, at least 10x more players is a humble goal that we should be able to reach.
An effort to port to new engine could be born from those results, but fellas, remember that you don't just get something done if you do not have a team that sticks and cooperates well. Having a coder and ton of artists is not enough. If you don't realize this yet, you'll realize it later. HDTP is a good example, and NV was mostly down to one man's efforts over 5+ years - hardly a 'team' (something HDTP pretty much boiled down to, years ago as well).

Whoever wants to do something with DXMP needs a lot of help from people that understand how to create online content and its eventual purpose.

All RPGC efforts on this engine will remain small mods that occasionally entertain some portion of players while they spend most of their gaming time playing something else. On a newer engine, it'll still boil down to the portion I explained under PVE paragraph. Fans could theoretically create a free MMO, but you'd in all likelihood still have to follow mmo basics, something that RPGC does not yet come close to but seems to progress towards. Most of us realized this "PR opportunity" of a certain project was a joke when it was initially announced years ago, for above-mentioned reasons. If talk about a mouse as if it was a lion, someone is going to get burned.