S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Series Megathread: The Zone will stop the Russians - Games

First post in this thread, hello! Are there any mods that gives any of the Stalker games a more "simple" feel? Like, the vast majority of weapons & armour are pistols, shotguns & leather jackets? Ive always liked to see a little less well armed zone instead opting more for "low-grade"/civilian weapons.

[QUOTE=AntontheFox;46847638]First post in this thread, hello! Are there any mods that gives any of the Stalker games a more "simple" feel? Like, the vast majority of weapons & armour are pistols, shotguns & leather jackets? Ive always liked to see a little less well armed zone instead opting more for "low-grade"/civilian weapons.[/QUOTE] Realistically the only mod you could find a viable use for lower grade weapons would be Redux for COP. You're pretty much torturing yourself otherwise since no other mod really makes lower tier weapons worth a damn past an hour of game time.

Pistols as well. They're bloody useful in Redux.

The optional addon for AO that makes bandits hostile seems rather crude; there's been a mod that makes them hostile only after you've sided with the stalkers for a while now. Might compile a little collection of addons for AO.

Dud Why is that CoP's got less mods than ShOC, like way more less?

[QUOTE=Sgt Doom;46847962]The optional addon for AO that makes bandits hostile seems rather crude; there's been a mod that makes them hostile only after you've sided with the stalkers for a while now. Might compile a little collection of addons for AO.[/QUOTE] Yea, I've been playing it and the bandit mod is kind've annoying. Bandits on average are supposed to be mobsters, not a group of people who have banded together to fight another group for whatever reason. It's also slightly broken; when bandits come inside the boat during an emission they're hostile and want to kill me.

[QUOTE=Cutthecrap;46848265]Dud Why is that CoP's got less mods than ShOC, like way more less?[/QUOTE] SoC has more content for people to play with, and is also the most popular of the 3 games. Kind of a shame, really. Clear Sky has the most content out of all 3 to play with, but its the least popular.

I figure modding for CoP will become the norm when CoC releases, at least in the Western community. The thing that CoP cries out for the most is good levels, reasons to explore.

I think people are going to be disappointed when CoC is released and there's virtually nothing to do but kill A-Life and find artifacts in the new levels. The key will be when someone adds proper missions and new storylines to all the old levels again.

Well I already like using CS/CoP for freeplay, I think I personally would be ok with a sort of random job/artifact hunt/emergent gameplay that CoC will provide. I love the dynamic-ness of MSO and to see that on old/beta/new maps would be great for me. That being said, hand crafted shit would/will be great to see.

I'm generally fine with freeplay, the trick is to give yourself a challenge of some sort (though admittedly they're usually little more than different tightnesses of clamps on one's bollocks, or a genocide quota to reach). That having been said, i'd like to see some e.g. fleshed-out recurring assassination-type missions. CoC would have plenty of hidey holes to randomly generate e.g. a Duty squad or bandit gang every so often, with a well-protected bigwig you either need to knock out at long range, or stealthily knife in the middle of the night lest you suffer retaliation from that group or faction. [editline]4th January 2015[/editline] One could also have said assassination missions require a certain method of death (nothing as asinine as FC3's knife-only all day erryday) e.g. to make it look like just bad luck in the Zone by luring Fat-Face McStompyton over to Colonel Dakka Xenophobia's temporary command post, or to dispose of the bodies in an anomaly afterwards. Or perhaps theft missions with varying restrictions,generally along the lines of not being detected or not killing anyone, but this'd vary by faction e.g. bandits aren't going to give a shit if you wipe out a group of loners to grab their goldfish.

A small thing I'm excited about, since it's using alundaio's AI shit, Pripyat Reborn had it where if you were friendly enough with a faction/stalker squad you could ask them to follow you. Rescuing dying stalkers and having them become followers throughout the zone would be pretty rad

[QUOTE=Sgt Doom;46847962]The optional addon for AO that makes bandits hostile seems rather crude; there's been a mod that makes them hostile only after you've sided with the stalkers for a while now. Might compile a little collection of addons for AO.[/QUOTE] That would be cool, I've been meaning to try out AO and it'd be nice to have some addons for it beyond just guns.

never played with any content mods before, only bug fixes and graphics mods, just installed ao 2.4.1 with all the extras and i just gotta say holy fuck this shit is awesome.

MSO really spices things up besides from all the good stuff that Nimble offers. Some of the weapons don't feel on-par with the rest though.

[QUOTE=Sgt Doom;46850240] That having been said, i'd like to see some e.g. fleshed-out recurring assassination-type missions. CoC would have plenty of hidey holes to randomly generate e.g. a Duty squad or bandit gang every so often, with a well-protected bigwig you either need to knock out at long range, or stealthily knife in the middle of the night lest you suffer retaliation from that group or faction. [/QUOTE] This sorta thing would be extra nice if it wasn't like in SoC. You would receive the mission, and be told where they are at the time you receive the mission, without receiving a marker or anything like that, and sometimes with some missions they would move around, meaning you would have to ask stalkers or whatever to try find where they went unless you hunt them down yourself. Assassination missions in SoC were pretty cruddy in that you just get a marker pointing out where they are at all times

[QUOTE=Beacon;46849724]I think people are going to be disappointed when CoC is released and there's virtually nothing to do but kill A-Life and find artifacts in the new levels. The key will be when someone adds proper missions and new storylines to all the old levels again.[/QUOTE] It's a matter of taste. If you don't like freeplay, don't play CoC. Some of our beta testers were addicted to the mod, some of them not, not a big deal. CoC intended to be a modders resource in the first place, but since we have freeplay start, and we added a lot of things for this, the gameplay value of the mod is raised a level. What we can offer yet, is the even more stabilized version of the COP engine and lua script engine, what is worth modding. After a long fight, now we can run CoC on debug binaries, which helps to fix all the remaining bugs and issues. Running gamedata with debug bins would be a good test for other mods too, since debug is very sensitive to the most hidden errors, what we could never figure out on our own. We couldn't achieve this, if a C++ wizard (besides Alundaio) wouldn't help on us recently. I hope in the end we can disappoint you. :smile:

Speaking of the engine modifications, how goes it? What sort of modding would be made possible with it, or is it currently just untangling spaghetti code?

[QUOTE=RobberBaron;46853890]It's a matter of taste. If you don't like freeplay, don't play CoC. Some of our beta testers were addicted to the mod, some of them not, not a big deal. CoC intended to be a modders resource in the first place, but since we have freeplay start, and we added a lot of things for this, the gameplay value of the mod is raised a level. What we can offer yet, is the even more stabilized version of the COP engine and lua script engine, what is worth modding. After a long fight, now we can run CoC on debug binaries, which helps to fix all the remaining bugs and issues. Running gamedata with debug bins would be a good test for other mods too, since debug is very sensitive to the most hidden errors, what we could never figure out on our own. We couldn't achieve this, if a C++ wizard (besides Alundaio) wouldn't help on us recently. I hope in the end we can dissappoint you. :smile:[/QUOTE] Please don't misunderstand what I mean, I'm very excited for CoC mate, I just feel like people are, as always, hyping to a level that cannot be met since as you say, your focus is on freeplay and having CoC be a base for others to mod from. I'm very excited to see all the engine improvements, I'm following avoitishin's git repo and the progress is promising! I would like to build the new binaries myself but don't have the time or patience to download the required SDKs and jump through the hoops to compile it all. The debug binaries sound like they're very useful - would you be able to upload them for me?

[QUOTE=Sgt Doom;46853904]Speaking of the engine modifications, how goes it? What sort of modding would be made possible with it, or is it currently just untangling spaghetti code?[/QUOTE] The engine is perfectly stable, contains mostly bugfixes for debug and release bins, and some nice new features. It helps a lot in modding, and makes our work much easier.

[QUOTE=Sgt Doom;46850240]I'm generally fine with freeplay, the trick is to give yourself a challenge of some sort (though admittedly they're usually little more than different tightnesses of clamps on one's bollocks, or a genocide quota to reach). That having been said, i'd like to see some e.g. fleshed-out recurring assassination-type missions. CoC would have plenty of hidey holes to randomly generate e.g. a Duty squad or bandit gang every so often, with a well-protected bigwig you either need to knock out at long range, or stealthily knife in the middle of the night lest you suffer retaliation from that group or faction. [editline]4th January 2015[/editline] One could also have said assassination missions require a certain method of death (nothing as asinine as FC3's knife-only all day erryday) e.g. to make it look like just bad luck in the Zone by luring Fat-Face McStompyton over to Colonel Dakka Xenophobia's temporary command post, or to dispose of the bodies in an anomaly afterwards. Or perhaps theft missions with varying restrictions,generally along the lines of not being detected or not killing anyone, but this'd vary by faction e.g. bandits aren't going to give a shit if you wipe out a group of loners to grab their goldfish.[/QUOTE] Yeah, basically a mod focusing on various dynamic and generated events in the zone build on top of CoC would be great.

CoC + Gunslinger + DarkenNeko's NPC Variation mod, MSO, increased segmentation of the zone (faction wars f.i.) and a new storyline + revamped side quests. Doable before CoP's 10 anniversary!

[QUOTE=Beacon;46853943]Please don't misunderstand what I mean, I'm very excited for CoC mate, I just feel like people are, as always, hyping to a level that cannot be met since as you say, your focus is on freeplay and having CoC be a base for others to mod from.[/QUOTE] PM sent. You can't see much hype around CoC, we just post actual gameplay videos and pictures, with existing and working features. We don't have photoshopped images about greatly exaggerated promises, we have no marketing, we don't make anything for hype. I can't do less to avoid hype, but i will not take down our moddb page. :wink: It's worth to download the sdk's mate, and build the bins by yourself, it's ready just in half an hour, and the source is changing day by day.

Thats a quite obvious stab at a certain mod, lol.

So far, i've merged a more useful hostile factions mod (automatically makes bandits hostile if you side with the stalkers, and Freedom or Duty when you side with the other), a Tremor replacement for when he fellates his Browning, and a part of Dunin COP mod (specifically the ammo repackaging) into AO 2.4.1. Small additions, but ones i've found I can't play any mod without. The ammo repacking in particular is a great quality of life improvement; no more hammering your mouse to transfer 1 and 2-shell boxes when they could just as easily be repacked into the standard 10-shell boxes. When the maker of AO ditched the engine mods, it took with it the thirst requirement, which makes adding a hud mod so much easier; so I figure I won't include one as people can just slap on whatever one they fancy the most. Planning on adding mutant looting, but i'd rather it be such that mutants have a regular inventory from which you can pluck the pieces a'la SoC, rather than the minimod I have in my mod archives, which gives you bits automatically (or none at all) when you press use on a mutant corpse, along with a message to indicate it which gets annoying after a while. Haven't the faintest clue as to how to go about readding an inventory to mutants, though.

[QUOTE=RobberBaron;46854093]We don't have photoshopped images about greatly exaggerated promises, we have no marketing, we don't make anything for hype. I can't do less to avoid hype, but i will not take down our moddb page. :wink:[/QUOTE] I always despised that particular mod because of how they spent more time photoshopping and making hype instead of working on actual mod...

[QUOTE=LoNer1;46854071]CoC + Gunslinger + DarkenNeko's NPC Variation mod, MSO, increased segmentation of the zone (faction wars f.i.) and a new storyline + revamped side quests. Doable before CoP's 10 anniversary![/QUOTE] Darkenneko's extended variation mod is in CoC already, and CoC itself is some kind of MSO and Faction War too, but ofc it can be detailed further with future mods. I'm not sure about Gunslinger, only if they release their source code changes.

i know it's not possible but it'd be incredible if someone were able to make xray multithreaded. the part of ao 2.4.1 that massively increases draw distance cripples my framerate by up to 60% (i think it's both mso and atmosfear), mostly because it's single threaded. for example in yanov, right outside of the station looking opposite the direction of kopachy, my framerate goes as low as 35 with 30% gpu usage. in vanilla cop i would get ~90. most of the time just running around my framerate is at 50 or 60 with very low gpu usage. it's an extremely painful experience for someone with a 120 hz monitor who's used to being at or right below 120 fps all the time. i run a 2500k @ 4.5 ghz with a gtx 770 for reference.

Multithreading is on the task list for the CoP Source.

[QUOTE=Beacon;46854232]Multithreading is on the task list for the CoP Source.[/QUOTE] it'd be a dream come true.