Give Me Deus Ex (Mod)

Give Me Deus Ex (GMDX) is a large-scale modification for Deus Ex. It modifies almost every aspect of the game, with a huge focus on systems and AI. Rated 9.5/10 on ModDB and winning the site’s Mod of the Year Editor's Choice award in 2014, GMDX has been fairly well received, and its latest release has been quite popular, with the mod surpassing its previous 2 month download mark of 2000 within a day and its trailer getting 46,000+ views at of July 2017.

Overview
GMDX offers new player mechanics, refined AI behavior, reworked weapon mechanics, rebalanced RPG elements, enhanced artistic direction, expanded level design, overhauled audio design, new interactions and simulated effects, improved user interface, and hundreds of bug fixes.

The author claims to stick to the original design concepts as closely as possible. A list of prominent features follows below.

Artificial Intelligence

 * Variable NPC senses and reactions based on difficulty. On higher difficulties, NPCs are more aggressive about seeking out the player and stay in the alert phase for longer.
 * New alarm dynamics – enemies sound the alarm if dead/unconscious allies are spotted.
 * Greatly improved NPC pathfinding, hazard avoidance, and tactics.
 * Smarter combat behavior, such as shooting destructible cover, laying down suppressive fire, flushing out the player with grenades, and strafing around corners.
 * Expanded behaviors for particular enemies – human enemies have a new melee swipe attack, dogs bark when they detect you, elite MJ12 soldiers employ cloaking, and more.

Enhanced Artistic Direction and Level Design

 * New aesthetic details, textures, and effects are applied to levels to update their look and feel.
 * A few levels have expanded areas, including alternate paths that emphasize having certain secondary skills (e.g. lockpicking, swimming, environmental training).
 * Levels are allegedly redesigned to take advantage of New Vision's textures (optional), as well as a majority of HDTP’s weapon and object models.

Audio Design and New Effects

 * New ambient sounds applied to several effects, including activation and deactivation of augmentations.
 * New walk sounds for various surfaces, as well as ladder-climbing sounds and sounds for falling from height.
 * Death sounds of both JC Denton and other NPCs updated.
 * Augmentations, such as Cloaking and Vision Enhancement feature new activation sounds and visual effects.
 * A psuedo physics system applied to movable objects. Examples include barrels spinning while midair, or knives rotating around their axis before landing on the ground.

New Mechanics

 * The player can mantle up ledges by tapping the jump button twice against a surface.
 * The player can assign secondary weapons (e.g. grenades) to use in combat with the press of a button.
 * The Microfibral Muscle augmentation allows the player to power-throw objects for high damage.
 * The scope modification allows GEP rockets to be steered remotely, and the laser mod allows them to be guided directly.
 * Holding the left and right lean keys together allows the player to peek over cover.
 * A new stamina system determines how long the player can run. It replaces the oxygen meter in the original.
 * Objects can be used in the world by left clicking them with nothing in hand.
 * There's an upper limit to eating food on Hardcore mode, and if the player eats too much they can no longer consume food until progress has been made till certain points.
 * Equippable items now only can occupy one inventory slot, and the charge of ballistic armor and hazmat suits depletes not with use but with damage sustained.

Weaponry

 * Recoil for most weapons was raised.
 * Extensive rebalancing of weapon statistics and attributes, like pistols no longer killing the player with a single headshot on Realistic and the throwing knives doing significantly more damage than in the base game.
 * Expanded weapon modding system, with 3 new weapon mods: damage, full-auto, and rate-of-fire. Weapons also accept a greater variety of mods.
 * New ammo types such as rubber shotgun pellets, armor-piercing pistol ammo, and taser darts.
 * New firing sounds and unique sounds to simulate reloading, dry-firing, etc.
 * Melee hitboxes were altered to aid takedowns, and ranges are more forgiving for stealth knockouts.
 * Unique weapon behavior, like tranquilizer darts applying an instant knockout effect when hitting enemies in the head and throwing knives being retrievable from NPC bodies.

RPG Systems

 * Perks added to the skills, that give minor additional benefits to the player. Examples include long-range multitooling, reduced scope sway, short fused grenades, and the ability to neutralize poison with medkits.
 * Augmentation design altered, with some augmentations being passive and a few activating automatically depending on the situation. Examples are Microfibral Muscle being passive and Power Recirculator activating automatically when you have energy draining augmentations on. One new augmentation, BPN-21, was also introduced.
 * Skills rebalanced and effects altered. Swimming is replaced with Athletics, and now raises how much stamina you have. Environmental Training now lets you stack more than one piece of usable equipment in a slot. There's also a new skill added, Stealth, which obviously alters how silent a player is.

Tweakable User Experience

 * Difficulty modes now alter a lot more than just bullet damage. For example, on Easy mode the AI forgets the player much more easily than on Realistic. A few extra traps and enemies are also introduced on the higher difficulties.
 * A new Hardcore mode offers additional challenge through new AI behavior (e.g. cameras noticing bodies), a hunger system, higher lockpick/multitool strengths, and forced checkpoint saving.
 * New menu options include real-time inventory, first-person death perspective, autosaving, custom color themes, the ability to reject combat knives when looting enemies, and the ability to disable many of GMDX’s new features.