Deus Ex Survival Mode - Update (09 Feb, 2011) news

First off, I would like to make one thing clear:

DXSM and TREM are not dead.

(In fact, considering the enemies in the mod[s], they're quite UN-dead... e-he...)

So, I can't blame you for wondering what's been happening since the last news post. Well:

• Several small (and not-so-small) bugs that have existed in the Deus Ex weapon code since release have been ironed out. Examples of which include: You now actually get recoil on the last shot of a clip, or in the case of single-shot-per-reload weapons - you actually get recoil.
• Development has been slow, due to exams/illness, however it has taken a recent jump forward during December, and late January/early February. We're still miles behind my intended schedule, but we're getting back on track.
• There will now be 5 Survivor classes, and 5 Zombie classes. The 5th Survivor class is near completion, however the 5th Zombie class doesn't exist yet. We may require the help of you - the reader - to come up with something.

But, enough small news, the BIG news is what you wanted.

USER INTERFACE

Carrot Eyes, anyone?

Carrots may not feature in this mod, but you can still easily pick out the vital items out in the dark - any inventory pickup now has a neat blue aura around it. Also, your frobTarget will have a large orange glow around it, like the medical-bot here.

So, I herd you like inventory glows?

The glow will only display on items that can be traced to without hitting a wall, so objects will glow in a 360^o radius of the players location, regardless of where they look. This is in-efficient, but will be fixed later, or in TREM-MP.

Over 100 Rainbows

No, this mod doesn't feature rainbows either. However, the user-interface for the game is heavily colour customisable - to the point where there is over 700 possible colours for the user interface at present. You can have the default user-interface style -

Mmm, sexy black/red user interface!

Or a user-interface in a colour of your choosing. Here are just a few examples -

Truely, quite a diverse pallette.

HARDWARE

As well as severe modifications to the firing system for weapons (AOE_Cone type weapons are no longer limited to firing out 5 bullets or 3 projectiles, for example), there are new toys available to the survivors. These include such gems as Anti - B.O.W. gas - which instantly kills standard enemies dead (available as single-use grenades and bazooka rounds) a flamethrower that will attach fire to flammable surfaces on the level, and a nano-sword powered by the life energy of its user.

There is also a relatively rare sight for Deus Ex Mods: a manual-operated turret.

Don't mess with a Heavy Machine Gun...

There is to be two types of turret: Heavy Machine Guns (like this), and miniguns. The difference being... the mesh, miniguns doing marginally more damage, needing spin-up time, and overheating faster than their H.M.G. counterparts.

MORE?

Yes, there is much more in the works.

• There is a special keypad minigame that should be familiar to players of TREM's source material that will be used in place of hacking via Multitools.
• There's to be many more weapons, of course.
• Uncommon zombie classes, including underwater zombies.
• Fists/claws will eventually no longer occupy the melee slot.
• There may also be a minigame to replace the use of lockpicks.
• Basic anti-cheat, to discourage n00bs.
• Add-in weapon packs per class.

Here's hoping to keep you more updated than we have done recently!

- Allan