A Slight Revision: IMPORTANT for DXMP. Rant 2

[Mastakilla]

Don't call it bitchy attitude just because your own bias. You know very well how much I played 0augs myself. I intentionally word my posts in a way that clarifies things I've heard people bullsh#t about for years. I remember you wearing that signature in atdm vs 0aug "war". And what was the point? Idiots from classic scene having verbal standoff with idiots from 0aug scene. In the end it didn't change the situation in the game. As a 0auger I oppose the common false belief that 0augs is not a mod. It is a mod. And when we talk about DXMP, because of all the idiots it is unfortunately also necessary to constantly emphasise what that DXMP is. Life would be so much easier if one didn't need to do that. If you go to UT forums and talk about UT, people understand what you talk about. In DXMP if you talk about DXMP, people don't understand what you talk about. *love*#ng ace.

Irony talking about bias, lol. I call it bitchy because you're taking shots at people. You're excluding a major part of the community by claiming they're not actually playing DXMP. DXMP = Deus Ex Multi Player and I for one don't care if its augs, 0 augs, funline, RPG, partyzone or whatever. It's DX, it's multiplayer.
You're never going to agree with me and I wont agree with you, but that's how I think of it and that's why your posts annoy me, because of your claims that people like me and dozens of others don't actually play DXMP and you're superior because you do. We're noobs because we don't prefer your gametype because it's too hard or whatever you think the reason is, when we're just having fun in our own way. Keeping the game alive in our own way. Because it's not augs that we are particularly interested in, we're killing your game by not playing it against our will. But we can't flip this scenario on you, because you claim to be actually playing DXMP, which is many metabolic end product.

Ken, it just pains me because we have such a big history in this game together for you to basically explicitly mention I'm not a part of the actual DXMP community or that I haven't been playing is just hurtful, I'll be honest. Whatever your ideas on this game, the 0aug scene has brought some amazing moments to DXMP, and has played it's BIG part in keeping this game running in its own way. I'm not entering a pissing contest of which has been more important or which is better, it really doesn't matter. We love this game and we shouldn't be divided just because of the gametype. You don't honestly think that's the right thing to do considering the current situation with multiplayer, do you?

@TheWolf and anyone else getting sick of arguements:
I'll try to refrain from entering into a pointless discussion like this, but unfortunatly because of this divide in opinion there's no way we can ''just play the game'' because for some reason, if I am to play the game I like, I'm not even actually playing according to Ken here.
I've been saying for a while when there were still arguements with Fear and Shadowrunner and rants about cheating from Phantom, that we should just organize matches and play rather then sit here and moan, but no one took me up on it. So don't tell me to play when I've tried to get people to play, and would still play if people make a topic to organize something. I would do it myself but like I just said, I already tried and failed.

[DaniSaggenza]

Irony talking about bias, lol. I call it bitchy because you're taking shots at people. You're excluding a major part of the community by claiming they're not actually playing DXMP. DXMP = Deus Ex Multi Player and I for one don't care if its augs, 0 augs, funline, RPG, partyzone or whatever. It's DX, it's multiplayer.

Amén to that.

[anax]

If only we played as much as we argue

THIS.
the entire community needs to read this single line, you summed it all up XD!

The perceived aversion to all things non-aug is because it's supposed to be the MAIN game type in Deus Ex.
You can have every mod under the sun, and for most of them, probably, it's perfectly fine.

0-Aug, Altfire, "Cage Match", etc. etc.

I like other game types... when there are enough players.
but personally (not affecting you or anyone else) i enjoy augs all the time because it's simply more engaging.

I Agree 0-Aug is part of DXMP, but it's like the secondary game type.
In a game with many players, multiple gametypes can be acceptable.

But with DXMP we have an exceptionally small amount of players spread out, with very very few active servers,
some gametypes are probably not even hosted anywhere currently... so yeah, there's that.

it's possible that many potential beginners (i've seen and talked to at least one recently) will gravitate to easier game types, anything that feels familiar to other generic shooter games.

0-Augs by itself is cool, but with our special situation i feel like people should start off by at least trying augs.
0-Augs is p much just like a regular shooter, except movement is slow and hit detection is terrible <-- especially in homehosted servers, in my experience so far, i can say that.

Literally no other game i'm aware of has game types like ATDM / BTDM in Deus Ex, so for that reason and for the above points, augs should be the main thing that people should try to learn, but not to the exclusion of other gametypes, IMO.

[synthetic]

@Nick

But you realize that people cannot see the cause of any issue if they are unable to even determine the difference between the original game and a mod? My goal here is not to bitch, my goal is to help people understand the perhaps complex structure of the community, as well as hopefully motivate someone to actually try the real game.

Don't tell me you haven't seen those who claim augs to be cheats. Tell me, Nick, what sense does it make? We are on Deus Ex forums talking about its multiplayer. What sense does that make?

Or this entire war between 0a and ATDM, and people like shadowrunner subsequently starting to complain how DXMP is boring because it only uses three rifles and has nothing interesting on maps, while he actually is talking about the 0a mod and not about DXMP.


People are making strong claims, drawing baseless conclusions, and spending every day in belief that they've played DXMP when they have only played its mod.

And in the end they wonder why their mod is dying. It is dying because they haven't noticed that the main game on which the mod depends is dying.


And you dani, zip it, you cant even play 0aug shooters without spending your pocket change on aimbots lol. Alpha was selling an aimbot on their public forums some years ago. Too bad you didn't play then.

edit: Also, Nick, your entire interpretation of my posts somehow being biased is false. I have intentionally stayed clear of giving any personal critique to the mods, because it would be pointless. Yes I have a certain opinion about 0augs (pretty good one, actually), and about Altfire and any other mod, but I don't see why I should state those opinions in this thread. In this thread I explain what is a mod and what is a game. Do not tell me you haven't heard of mods before. You played Elder Scrolls games.

edit2: How is Deus Ex Multiplayer, or DXMP actually DXMP if it is only Multi Player without Deus Ex in it?

[synthetic]

Man I keep writing a post after a post and keep getting derailed without hitting quite the right note. Heres an attempt to make it very simple for you:


DXMP is a deathmatch game made strategy-based shooter by its skillpoints and augmentations that it borrowed from the single player.

a) anything that doesn't have the trademark game mechanics in place or changes the original game significantly, is a mod.

b) any mod's activity, population will depend on the health of the main game. If DXMP is dead, your mod will die*.
potential exception may apply, but has not been realized by this community and in this community through its 14 years, and following latest project developments, it wont be any time soon.

c) because of the simplicity of the editor and the small size of the community, everybody in this game is a hero without any regard for quality or purpose of the mod

d) it is not newsworthy that DXMP does not have game-oriented and motivated coders (perhaps bad wording, I mean coders motivated by *the* actual game). Post 2003 there has been only one coder, and that was DejaVu.

e) the previous point perhaps signifies even more the fact that we actually have a surprising amount advanced or learning coders that have provided quality mods for the engine rather than any gametype or mod. Alex, Nobody are the two that still stand out, with the likes of DJ, Allan, or Dae contributing with helpful and much needed functions to add to any server or game. It is however a bit difficult to motivate such coders to work on the actual gameplay experience which they have had lacking contact with.
All mentioned coders usually were focused on one mod or another, even if the releases I praise them for were not restricted to their mod. See point B.


In conclusion: hopes to bring back DXMP activity have been constantly surfacing since 2003. That is more than 10 years. In reality, we don't have enough hands active and motivated to make it happen. It is also likely that we never had. My goal with my posts was to make you think about it, and see for yourself what conclusions you draw about your future endeavours.

ps: to all those that think dxmp sucks, be at peace, we dxmp fans think your opinion does. quid pro quo. your opinion for ours.

[Mastakilla]

Alright man, all I'm going to say is that even in other games, mods are still considered to be part of the game. Minecraft with mods is still minecraft, Skyrim with mods is still Skyrim, etc etc. Without mods is considered ''vanilla''. So, 0 augs is still DXMP, funline is still DXMP, RPG is still DXMP and ATDM is DXMP. Modded DXMP is still DXMP, your DXMP is what most gamers would consider vanilla. Nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with modded. That's all I'm saying, and you don't have to agree, I'm just explaining why I wasn't fond of your post.

Call me stupid, but are you saying that the game can only be saved if people play augs?

[TheWolf]

I don't see what the problem is, DXMP is DXMP and I play all gametypes including RPG

[anax]

.

[synthetic]

I think discussion is going all over the board and while individual topics are good to debate as to gain better understanding of the overall picture, I think I can summarize the entire thread with the following:

• Anax and I motivate you to play DXMP more, alongside your mods. I never said you need to quit your mods, my point is that you shouldn't let the game die before you've at least had some fun in actual DXMP. I've offered many times to help you get started there, and I didn't mean owning you in server all day. It was your fun that I was interested in. Also keep in mind that the game is easier than you think it is. If you have passed first grade in School somehow, you can likely figure out how you need to play.
• Anax and I called for an effort to improve our game. I listed many different aspects that would have to be covered, in one of my posts.
• We established that there are no modders/coders participating in the thread that like DXMP enough to work on it. Okay. But we've also established that many core issues impact DXMP as a mod platform in general. I've also sent my thanks to several coders that have dedicated their time towards DXMP in one way or another.

I think thats about it. Maybe something else was discussed that escapes my mind at the moment. Urgent issues would be DXMP performance on modern hardware first, cheating vulnerabilities second (if you expect new players at all). Since cheats are so easily to come by and very popular among free shooter players, especially from developing countries, it unfortunately becomes a priority as well. I don't necessarily think we need to spend time on blocking CE though, but colour coded crosshair needs to disappear. Dejavu's method in latest minimtl is useless as well, unfortunately. Itll only block vewry low-IQ trigbotters.

[synthetic]

Sorry for double posting but as you can see my posts can get a bit lengthy and cover several very different topics. Here I'd like to cover what functions modders have provided us with thus far.


DXMP as a MP game needs functions that give players useful abilities or increase entertainment value.

• Surprisingly or unsurprisingly, I actually consider one of the more important mods to be Nobody's voicepack mod for frags. It has been incredibly popular and fun mod of preference even in the most hardcore servers. Even if admins have had conflicting views on what patches to use, they'd generally go for this mod.
• Essential for some servers, and non-essential for others, the fact that servers have an option to provide player with VoteTeamKill or teamkill management as thorough as Dae's(?) mod, is absolutely fantastic. It is a must have mod for the community, optional for an admin, depending on how he runs his server.
• Voice "Barks" mod by Poor (?) is an excellent idea, but mod itself seems unfinished and thus unsuitable for real server, from what I gathered last time I checked it. I believe the idea was great, though.
• Typing mod with its variety of options by Allan (?) is another perhaps minor but an obvious enhancement to any server. Admins have so many different ways to handle typing, and it even comes with cloak-aug support!
• Mapvote mutators are another essential mod, although the latest release seems to be coded bit poorly (doesnt play along with other functions well iirc).

Given how much garbage mods and maps the community has produced, it is vital to appreciate these few mods that make our game a real game.

There are likely one-two more such mods, and separate mention needs to be made about Alex' several generations of patch releases from CRD to ANNA (with Nobody) and Nobody's work on remote server control.

And for the fact that we can even host servers we need to thank Alpha, Alex, and an UT player called Sora.


What is missing is variety of similar functions, as well as urgent enhancements of some functions (advban doesnt advban anymore etc). Some of these functions also don't work well with eachother.

One of the functions that keeps popping in mind is a splash screen of a map thats being loaded. Although load times are quite brief these days for our game, it is never the less a strange thing to be lacking in an MP game.


As far as mods go, although off the topic, I think two mods deserve praise (perhaps three even). Arx Genus by Alex and MrBlack (unfinished/unpolished), and Animals vs Humans by DejaVu (unfinished/unpolished). Third potentially critical mod is HejHujka's mod (think it was original Arena from 2001) that albeit bugged was the most serious botmatch mod to surface in DXMP. Only way to host it is to batch errorlog deletion or disable error logging, though..
The two different weaponimport mods obviously add some fun but I don't find them to be important enough to mention, considering they are another game.

[Poor]

Voice "Barks" mod by Poor (?) is an excellent idea, but mod itself seems unfinished and thus unsuitable for real server, from what I gathered last time I checked it. I believe the idea was great, though.

It was finished. I just never wrote a tutorial for creating custom voice packages, though anyone familiar with the SDK could do it. I wouldn't recommend it for a serious server however. A lot of players will stop playing and just spam barks the entire time to be silly.

[synthetic]

I remember downloading the barks mod and checking through the package, in theory the mod would be awesome for serious server, in practice your mod *seemed* to be a bit clunky to actually use, if I remember right. Obviously shouldn't be able to spam it, but setting it up should be made fairly simple as well. An average gamer can handle ini edits for bark binds if you provide decent guide, though.


edit, on the topic:


Why so many veterans are borderline obsessed fans of DXMP is the experience it provides on the fairly minimalistic deathmatch maps. Just because some people have found it too hard or whatever doesnt mean that it didn't provide the most fun you can have in here. For you who have claimed it, it is 50% your laziness and 50% dead game. I can agree that it is not fun to 1on1 a random veteran in a streak based game, and I remember Triad even having an interesting philosophy about 1on1s, which they may or may not have developed after becoming old farts. Namely, I recall at least Messiah or his brother proclaiming that 1on1 doesnt count and atdm is team game. Setting aside whether or not it counts, the best experience is no doubt in team play when it comes to streak game. I've had the opportunity to have numerous awesome atdm games but unfortunately they have always been a bit hard to come by - depending how you assess the quality of the game I guess. If you have 9 beginners in server and 1 good player then it isn't really all that awesome. But, if you put 10 good players in server and whatever amount of beginners, you will get a chance to see what DXMP is really about.

I for one find coders playing games an interesting subject, as they tend to have a bit different look on the game that they know the inner workings of. Very often that results in lack of competitive motivation, if there was one to begin with (depends on person) but off the top of head I remember DejaVu being a difficult enemy in atdm, and Alex was one of those that managed to hit 100 frags in 20 minutes in 0a. Nobody seemed to be surprisingly good altfire player last I saw him there. But what I've found funny is that a game as tactical as atdm should fit a coder pretty well, especially the type that knows how much damage and within what ranges anything does. When I was a beginner auger I remember getting pwned by Deja by his lams that he kept plant-sniping. I didn't see deja, I didn't see lams, but I sure died a bunch lol. I learned there one side of our game.

[synthetic]

One thing that doesn't give me rest is whether its pessimistic estimate to consider any effort to improve DXMP a failure, or if it is just realistic.

As few as there are us left, there still exist multitude of approaches to this agenda. Anax with these threads is in a friendly manner trying to get something going in general. Another player was very serious about hands on work about DXMP as a platform for all of its gametypes and mods. And then theres me with my ranting. I've tried to cooperate with some of you off private forums but my approach is different again. I'm only interested in working on the actual DXMP, mods are fun to have but would just distract the main focus.

And there are some problems for all of these 3 approaches. Mine is most evident: there are no modders left in game that actually know the game. Ok, sucks but there it is. Anax might have more success by poking you guys in a more friendly manner, but as a result everybody just starts working on their favourite mods separately so we have low-grav animals vs lams mods and stuff. I think the guy who tried to help the game in general will have most success, so anyone with some useful material can uhh.. pm it to Anax and he can see if Alpha group is still active.

In principle, there are people who want to polish original game, and those who want to polish the game as mod platform. You can ignore my ranting and lend your hand to those who are interested in getting the general stuff done. I made two major miscalculations: assumption that people know what DXMP is, and assumption that people might be interested in doing something for it even if they dont know what it is. Probably got a bit carried away with the awesomeness of the idea of something happening. Btw ty for ignoring any and all PMs, chinny. Awesomesauce.

[anax]

Ok i'll get to these 1000 different threads soon enough, but here's an important thing:

Dani is offering you the chance to have a Skype discussion with him this evening, but not necessarily just with you or just about your disagreements, but a discussion with any DXer who is online on Skype right now, about what is troubling us.

Personally, If i was not interested in a future for DX then i would not even make a forum post let alone suggest a Skype group.

All of us are making forum posts, we all care, it's time to stop bullshitting stuff and time to talk it out.

[synthetic]

Im talking about work on DXMP, dani has nothing to do with it O_o in normal game entire BB would be perma banned until they drop supporting cheaters and are screened for any cheats. Other servers again might not even bother. But thats different topic and I intentionally posted here about dxmp editing.
This time derailing is your bummer, Anax, not mine. For a change