Post news Report RSS What Is Confix?

This will most likely be the only article posted here, so I tried making it as comprehensive as possible. The change log will be uploaded as a file for easier reading.

Posted by on

Confix (con-fix), noun. Confix is a mod targeting to fix and slightly expand upon the conversations in Deus Ex. Such fixes include things as big as broken logic preventing access to dialogue and gameplay to the more benign typo fixes. Expansions include features that are hinted-at in the lore - for instance, if Louis Pan stole something money from the newsstand, why isn't it added to his inventory and you aren't able to steal it from him when you kill him? It may seem very specific, but the intent here is to make the conversations more whole.

Confix was made as a side-project under GMDXv9, and leeched off its beta testers. First and foremost I'd like to thank |Totalitarian| for both his mod that brought us all together, and supported other mods during development. Also, as a result, it has some GMDX-specific additions. The ability to arm Miguel in the MJ12 prison is a logical addition, but could've been seen as a controversial addition to vanilla, and therefore was walled-off. The same can be said for a number of other improvements, but they can all be activated with a simple flag switch - Enhancement_Detected.

At this opportunity I'd like to thank all of other developers who fixed conversations on their own and let me build on their work: Bjorn, Bogie, DefaultPlayer001 and Hawk. I'd also like to thank all of the GMDXv9 beta testers, and in particular to PhDinSorcery, who has been a great help in finding many small bugs I've never would've noticed myself (and neither has most of the community for a decade and a half).

If you wish to expand on Confix, you should know that it was made using ConEdit, the conversation editing tool for Deus Ex (uploaded here as well). The language it uses resembles assembler - After a line will play it will immediately load the next line, ad infinitum or until reaching an end event. It can check and do simple ALU functions on a very specific number of variables. The most common tools are flag sets (setting a variable), flag checks (branch), and jumps. The naming convention of the audio files is very strict, and generally ignores the filenames stated explicitly by ConEdit - rather it's always ActorName_LineNumber. The pathing is strict as well, but can be figured out by auto-generating the filenames. Compiling the files after they're all in order is done through UCC, and for more knowledge about that you should consult the Deus Ex SDK.

Post a comment

Your comment will be anonymous unless you join the community. Or sign in with your social account: