Deus Ex 2010: Play it With Mods
Eus Ex is a first person roleplaying game. Like morrowind, it has a large community of players that continue to enjoy and modify the game. The story centers around a series of conspiracies to consolidate power and control human destiny. Your character is an augmented human with powerful abilities provided by nano-machines in your body. We're now in the 10th anniversary of the game's release. Perhaps it is time to revisit the game, but this time with some nice mods to update it to current standards.
I bought the steam version of the game, which was selling for less than $3 online. But whatever version of the game you have, these modifications should work reasonably well. The goal of these mods is not to change any gameplay, but merely update the graphical quality and fix some bugs. They include a new texture package, high definition body textures, and support for high resolution screens. I will also describe how you can enable things like bloom and other effects, but these affects are currently a work-in-progress and may not be worth your effort. Load this image to see what Deus Ex could look like.
Step One: Install & Run
Let's begin by actually installing the game and going to the install path, which can be found easily. If you bought it from the steam the location will be something like this: C:\...\...\Steam\SteamApps\common\deus ex\System. Make sure that you copy the "system" folder so you can revert back to the original setup in case you bork the operation. Run the game, take a look around the main menu, and load the training course. You don't have to do the training, but this way you can get a baseline of what the game looks like unmodded. There is another reason we're doing this: by running the game, we fill in the config file for the game, which we're going to mess with later. Okay, go ahead and quit out of the game.
Step Two: Patch The Executable
Your going to want to patch the Deusex.exe executable in order to make it work without steam, but also so you can take advantage of higher resolutions and various types of graphics renderers that you may want later (such as Directx10 or D3D9.) This patch will provide you with the most options. It was developed by Kentie who has provided drivers as well (we'll get to those later.) unzip and drop the executable in the system folder. click yes to replace the original - you made a copy of the system folder right?
Step Three: Install New Textures
There is a mod project called New Views go ahead download the mod. While you're waiting for this 900mb document to download I suggest you open the deusex.ini file. Scroll down until you reach [OpenGLDrv.OpenGLRenderDevice] and directly underneath, paste in: UseS3TC=True . When New Views is finished downloading, dump all the new textures into the textures folder, click yes to replace them. Don't forget to follow any instructions in the opengl folder. Now reopen Deus Ex and configure the graphics. Switch the driver to opengl and the resolution to the highest your monitor can do, choose the scaling or non-scaling GUI, as well as field of view. Make sure the high resolution texture box is checked. Run the training mission again and you'll see an obvious difference from before. Quit out of the game.
Step Four: Install Map Fixes
This map patch fixes some issues with the steam version of the game, as well as musical and visual problems. Get it here and dump it in the maps folder.
Step Five: Install New Model Textures
The High Definition Texture Project adds better model meshes and textures. Download the mod and run the installer. This mod makes some changes to your hands (think mittens to gloves) and adds to some detailed model textures, but not much else. HDTP works by making a copy of the deusex.exe and making its own executable called - wait for it! - HDTP.exe. There are some issues, but they may not apply to you. First, if you have saved a game while running HDTP you have to keep running HDTP to get back to that save game, otherwise you encounter the "HDTPPanim is missing" error. Which means if you're modding your game halfway through the story, be wary. Second, if you start a new game after installing HDTP, you can get those textures to load from the deusex executable by adding some lines to the deusex.ini. Add the bolded lines below in the exact location they appear here:
[Core.System]
PurgeCacheDays=30
SavePath=..\Save
CachePath=..\Cache
CacheExt=.uxx
Paths=..\HDTP\System\*.u
Paths=..\HDTP\Textures\*.utx
Paths=..\System\*.u
Step Six: Adding Special Visual Effects
At this point you can play the game without issues, which is what I do. You can experiment with the special effects provided by enb-series. I tried this mod and found it to make lighting either too bright, too dark, or it disabled the more preferable high-resolution textures. If you want to add them, download the mod from here and install the contents of the zip into your system folder. Don't install the deusex.ini it will gum up the works. Next, load the game and choose the d3d9 driver from the config menu and check out the settings by hitting shift+f12 at the main menu. Things will instantly get brighter. Take a look at the training mission to see if everything works. The settings for the visual effects can be modified through the enbseries.ini file.
I have a theory that HDTP and the enb-series don't work if you install enb-series after HDTP. But that's just a theory, so experiment with it how you like.
Final Thoughts
This blag didn't come about just from my own experimentation. It comes from the help of several people on the steam forums as well as mod forums. Namely Znokiss (from steam forums) and others who have contributed there. As well as the makers of New Views, HDTP and thanks to Kentie for providing the deus-ex-fix. If you have any comments or solutions, feel free to post them here.
