>>16570227Also, as you could bet on it, they don't have smooth stairs in the game. The ramps are actually better because of this.
You know how the screen jitters up and down real bad when you're walking up stairs? (Which isn't only in Deus Ex of course, both Source and GoldSrc have had the same problem. But they brought in a command in the former that fixes it. Cool how it works. It doesn't actually change the geometry of the stairs themselves in any way, but instead makes the camera smooth itself while going up or down stairs. That's one way of getting around it, I suppose? Before that was put in, map makers put invisible ramps right over stairs to emulate them being smooth, but I think that came with a couple of it's own problems as well, and it was tricky to do when it came to things like spiral staircases. If you ever felt really weird while going up a spiral in any Source game, that's probably why. Anyway. Why couldn't they do the same in Deus Ex? I guess it wasn't really seen as a problem, I mean, there aren't that many times where you go up stairs in the game. But there definitely are instances where it's annoying, because it being really jittery as you're running up stairs makes it hard to shoot enemies or really understand what's happening at all. Could've been easily fixed, right? Also, why am I putting this entire paragraph between parentheses? And is it technically correct to do?)
But, you know, I can't really fault it that much. It is a bit immersive still. When you're crouched, slowly going up stairs and gradually peeking your head as you take every step, it really does feel like you're there and sneaking up those stairs. Which is cool. It's just a problem when you start running up them at full speed, it feels as if there's an earthquake happening. (Fun fact, earthquake rates have gone up over 300% by 2052 in Deus Ex. Which is implied to be the work of the powers that be. Pretty cool, although, why?)
That's all I have to say about stairs.
