Junior Adventurer's Guild - December: Deus Ex: Invisible War

[Lord of Riva]

I even have that **** game, may give it a whirl.

I'm looking forward to loading screens every 5 seconds.

[Roderick]

I was really looking forward to making some blue or red choices in Mass Effect.

[Oyster Sauce]

I was really looking forward to making some blue or red choices in Mass Effect.

You didn't vote!

[Tweed]

I was really looking forward to making some blue or red choices in Mass Effect.

You didn't vote!

bandicam 2024-12-01 08-01-51-002.jpg

Granted he didn't vote for *** Effect.

[Roderick]

Got both Deus Ex ready to go. Going to start with the first one.

[rusty_shackleford]

vote.jpeg

[Tweed]

I voted for Underrail before you losers started pouring in for slop.

[Tweed]

The joke is on you either way, I'm already finished. Where's my badge? Where's my HQ Platinum?

[rusty_shackleford]

The joke is on you either way, I'm already finished. Where's my badge? Where's my HQ Platinum?

Post proof

[The_Mask]

A post 123.

[Tweed]

The joke is on you either way, I'm already finished. Where's my badge? Where's my HQ Platinum?

Post proof

viewtopic.php?p=172942-festive-fundrais ... ar#p172942

[Oyster Sauce]

The joke is on you either way, I'm already finished. Where's my badge? Where's my HQ Platinum?

Post proof

viewtopic.php?p=172942-festive-fundrais ... ar#p172942

Play it again

[J1M]

Reposting my opinions on Invisible War from another thread since some people may only know this game by reputation.

It is generally viewed as the greatest disappointment in gaming of all time. This is correct. It did not live up to impossibly high expectations. It does, however, compare favorably with immersive sims released in the last decade. If you enjoy the genre, your only real option is to look to the past.

Top 3 problems in Deus Ex 2:
-Studio head Warren Spector decided that the lead SKU for the sequel to the greatest PC game ever made should be the Xbox console. (Even if market realities meant the game needed a console release, it could have been ported.)

-Warren Spector insisted on trying to ship a game with 100% real-time lighting in 2003. (Even 21 years later this would be ill-advised due to the technical tradeoffs required. Which manifested most clearly as extremely small levels with long load times when combined with the previous point.)

-Praise from the first game led to designers high on their own supply. Systems received rounds of changes that led to overly-abstract "solutions". (For example, the round UI "because eyes are round" or all guns sharing the same ammo type. This left less time for the designers to craft memorable levels.)

TLDR: It is better than its reputation and the game industry peaked over 20 years ago.

[Tweed]

Post proof

viewtopic.php?p=172942-festive-fundrais ... ar#p172942

Play it again

No. That's a legit playthrough started after finishing Deus Ex for the badge to remind myself of how *** it was.

[The_Mask]

I wanted to vote for KOTOR II. Oh well!

Also... we should add KCD 1 in January to prepare for KCD 2 in February.

I doubt you'll listen to me, but it's worth a try.

[Shillitron]

*** effect

I wanna go on record saying I only voted for trash effect because

Some good picks, some gay ones.

Based on this post I knew you wanted Underrail before I could even see the poll results.

[Tweed]

There's no reason to put myself through another eight hours of suffering when one extra hour to top off is enough.

bandicam 2024-12-01 08-30-06-158.jpg

It was just as miserable as the last time I played it almost a decade ago and I'm not doing it again. Punishing me for having an ace up my sleeve for picking the absolute worst game in existence doesn't reflect well on the management.

[Tweed]

*** effect

I wanna go on record saying I only voted for trash effect because

Some good picks, some gay ones.

Based on this post I knew you wanted Underrail before I could even see the poll results.

Yeah, but it shouldn't matter because I already beat the game and recently.

[Shillitron]

*** effect

I wanna go on record saying I only voted for trash effect because

Some good picks, some gay ones.

Based on this post I knew you wanted Underrail before I could even see the poll results.

Yeah, but it shouldn't matter because I already beat the game and recently.

That means you were trying to get a FREE BADGE!

@Oyster Sauce do something you smelly janny!

[Finarfin]

Underrail is gay.

[Nooneatall]

Why are the loading screens so slow on modern hardware?

According to the search results, Deus Ex: Invisible War uses a heavily modified version of the Unreal Engine 2, dubbed the “Flesh Engine”. This modified engine was capable of producing great visuals, but it was a technical nightmare to work with. The lead engine coder left the project partway through, leaving no documentation behind, which caused significant issues for the development team.

Ah I see, no one knew what they were doing. I can only imagine how slow it was to load levels when this game came out, it must have taken 30 minutes. Whoever programmed that really ****** up and I'm curious to see what it looks like.

[Tweed]

I wanna go on record saying I only voted for trash effect because



Based on this post I knew you wanted Underrail before I could even see the poll results.

Yeah, but it shouldn't matter because I already beat the game and recently.

That means you were trying to get a FREE BADGE!

@Oyster Sauce do something you smelly janny!

If Dorateen can get a badge by posting his journals then I can get it by posting my victory a few months ago.

[rusty_shackleford]

Yeah, but it shouldn't matter because I already beat the game and recently.

That means you were trying to get a FREE BADGE!

@Oyster Sauce do something you smelly janny!

If Dorateen can get a badge by posting his journals then I can get it by posting my victory a few months ago.

I don't know how @Oyster Sauce is going to handle this — to be clear, I have nothing to do with the AG now. But going forward I'd probably require playing the game to be at or after the month it's for.
I just add the badges when requested tho, so any rules or decisions are his to make.

[Unhelpful Contrarian]

Reposting my opinions on Invisible War from another thread since some people may only know this game by reputation.

It is generally viewed as the greatest disappointment in gaming of all time. This is correct. It did not live up to impossibly high expectations. It does, however, compare favorably with immersive sims released in the last decade. If you enjoy the genre, your only real option is to look to the past.

Top 3 problems in Deus Ex 2:
-Studio head Warren Spector decided that the lead SKU for the sequel to the greatest PC game ever made should be the Xbox console. (Even if market realities meant the game needed a console release, it could have been ported.)

-Warren Spector insisted on trying to ship a game with 100% real-time lighting in 2003. (Even 21 years later this would be ill-advised due to the technical tradeoffs required. Which manifested most clearly as extremely small levels with long load times when combined with the previous point.)

-Praise from the first game led to designers high on their own supply. Systems received rounds of changes that led to overly-abstract "solutions". (For example, the round UI "because eyes are round" or all guns sharing the same ammo type. This left less time for the designers to craft memorable levels.)

TLDR: It is better than its reputation and the game industry peaked over 20 years ago.

Deus Ex IW at it worst is still better then the vast majority of games now which is deeply depressing when you think about it.

[WhiteShark]

But going forward I'd probably require playing the game to be at or after the month it's for.
I just add the badges when requested tho, so any rules or decisions are his to make.

@Oyster Sauce is the one who set the precedent that recent playthroughs count even if they happened before it came up in AG. That's how I got my Alpha Protocol badge, and I had played it much earlier relative to the AG month compared to @Tweed's playthrough of Invisible War.

[Nooneatall]

But going forward I'd probably require playing the game to be at or after the month it's for.
I just add the badges when requested tho, so any rules or decisions are his to make.

@Oyster Sauce is the one who set the precedent that recent playthroughs count even if they happened before it came up in AG. That's how I got my Alpha Protocol badge, and I had played it much earlier relative to the AG month compared to @Tweed's playthrough of Invisible War.

Yeah but you're an autistic Christian and he's an autistic furfag so I think that's worth consideration.

[J1M]

Why are the loading screens so slow on modern hardware?

According to the search results, Deus Ex: Invisible War uses a heavily modified version of the Unreal Engine 2, dubbed the “Flesh Engine”. This modified engine was capable of producing great visuals, but it was a technical nightmare to work with. The lead engine coder left the project partway through, leaving no documentation behind, which caused significant issues for the development team.

Ah I see, no one knew what they were doing. I can only imagine how slow it was to load levels when this game came out, it must have taken 30 minutes. Whoever programmed that really ****** up and I'm curious to see what it looks like.

At launch the loading times were roughly comparable to now. But why?

In order fit within the memory limitations of the Xbox, the game engine essentially shuts down and reinitializes each time you change a level.

I assume this was done to hit a launch date because they were encountering memory leaks they couldn't fix given the constraints they were working under.

EDIT: On that note, the game shipped with a number of .ini file configurations that were for the Xbox. I believe most of these were fixed with a patch, but people familiar with the Unreal engine may be able to tweak a few things for a better PC experience.

[rusty_shackleford]

In order fit within the memory limitations of the Xbox, the game engine essentially shuts down and reinitializes each time you change a level.

A bunch of original xbox titles do this AFAIK, actually rather creative.

Reminds me of Walter Bright making the fastest C++ preprocessor just by stubbing out calls to free and letting the OS clean it up when it exits. OS-level garbage collection

[Tweed]

In order fit within the memory limitations of the Xbox, the game engine essentially shuts down and reinitializes each time you change a level.

A bunch of original xbox titles do this AFAIK, actually rather creative.

This might explain why I end up with 20 copies of dx2main.exe on my ******* desktop that I have to /taskkill when I'm done playing.

[Nooneatall]

Why are the loading screens so slow on modern hardware?

According to the search results, Deus Ex: Invisible War uses a heavily modified version of the Unreal Engine 2, dubbed the “Flesh Engine”. This modified engine was capable of producing great visuals, but it was a technical nightmare to work with. The lead engine coder left the project partway through, leaving no documentation behind, which caused significant issues for the development team.

Ah I see, no one knew what they were doing. I can only imagine how slow it was to load levels when this game came out, it must have taken 30 minutes. Whoever programmed that really ****** up and I'm curious to see what it looks like.

At launch the loading times were roughly comparable to now. But why?

In order fit within the memory limitations of the Xbox, the game engine essentially shuts down and reinitializes each time you change a level.

I assume this was done to hit a launch date because they were encountering memory leaks they couldn't fix given the constraints they were working under.

That explains it. I thought it just had a really bad loading algorithm for each cell. Could be an interesting experiment to try to recreate this in a modern engine. The game isn't half bad an hour in.