S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Series Megathread: Maybe someday mods releasing edition - Games

I didn't really find any major flaws in the vanilla loot system, to be honest. I think it makes sense that most unmarked stashes are empty, with food and ammo being the most common contents of the ones that aren't. Whenever I'm going somewhere I like not feeling obliged to stop and check each stash on the way, lest I'd miss some loot.

And then you have situations like I have few times where you have stash 30-50m from you that is empty, you loot body and magic happen: the same stash now is full... no sense at all... What I would like to see is that most of stashes have random trash items or 1-2 bandages/vodka/small ammo/vodka nothing big, but stashes that you get from bodies have proper stuff that Stalkers would really need to hide or leave when they dont have any other choice: looted gun, artifacts, backup ammo etc.

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/242145/faebdf21-4511-461c-b872-d187e9ab765d/afbeelding.png Finally something to look forward to Dead Air is a global modification based on Call of Chernobyl that changes all aspects of the game, starting from graphics, audio, and special effects, and ending with various gameplay and AI features. The modification evolves from the ideas started in the author’s previous project: Call of Misery. The major inspirations for Dead Air were projects such as NLC, MISERY, Autumn Aurora, and OGSE. Dead Air prioritizes the development of the platform’s potential, gameplay complexity, and attention to detail, along with working on both quality and quantity of content. I really like the attention to detail here.

It looks like the link Loner posted is now broken - there's a hyphen now It looks very exciting, though. Is it bad what I'm most excited for is the glowsticks and switchable lights?.

Those Fruit Punches look awesome with the flashes of volumetric light. Good lord. This game's lighting engine is still so good.

Okay the fact you can wipe your gasmask like metro has got me interested and that they have mask overlays that don't look like a 2d png

Sad that after those 20 years all we gonna have its the same gameplay with just new FX features. Because seriously how many time you can play CoC and do exact same simple missions and wander around doing nothing? I would seriously rather have 1 proper story mode or some nice modification like warfare per year than 100 mods that just throw in it other people addons, tweak graphic and call it a day. Im not saying that its bad thing to have such mods, but all mods that we had for past years where just compilation mods, weapon addons that are in never ending TBR state or copy/paste mods based on CoC that try to mimic Misery(I have no idea why, because this mod is just average...)

How is A-Life dumbed down in CoP?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V12oBKOtNOw

At the very least we've got wepl working on his own mod with custom quests, i think once that gets out it'll help a lot since you never really see custom stuff like that outside of mods like OGSE or soups and stuff

Stalkers and mutants cannot travel between levels. Because of the squad system mutants no longer act as individuals, so they no longer perform things they did in the other games, like become more aggressive and find things to eat when their satiety was low, and go back home to lair and sleep when they were tired. The squad object controls their behavior, which is to make them go from one smart terrain to another where they do the path job where they just walk around, lay down, etc. It's a lot more restrained.

Yeah, I'll probably show off some stuff soon relating to this but it's definitely going to be complete storylines spanning the majority of the maps (still not sure what I'm going to do with Darkscape..). I'm going to stick to the lore as closely as possible but also expand on it as realistically as possible. And by storylines I'm referring to definitely something different for the major different factions, as well as multiple different endings depending on the choices you make throughout your playthrough. I'm still not sure if I'll be able to fit in multiple storylines for each faction, since I'm limited to the amount of maps, but I might mess around with the idea of different storylines taking place at different time periods. We'll see. A bit ambitious, I know, but I'm working on this daily and have already made a lot of progress. Again, I'll show off some of this stuff later but off the top of my head heres a few things I already have going: -Weapon overhaul, with around 200 weapons or so, all high quality models/animations -Artifact overhaul, currently 200 variants of artifacts as well as new ways to use them -Various AI improvments/upgrades (NPCs go inside while raining, etc) -Outfit overhaul, various new outfits to fill the gaps, completely new balancing and values for each suit And of course, I've started on quests and storyline stuff as well.

Oh, I never even noticed in a few hundered hours. Seems like they did a good job.

What were the benefits of the squad system? Performance? Because that makes it sound a lot worse in most respects

NPCs go inside while raining I really need that. Never understood why they dropped all weather effects on NPCs, at least I think there is none even in SoC.

This sounds ambitious as fuck but I'm cheering you on. It's great to see a western fashion maker modder working on something a little more original.

What I would really like to see instead of even AI tweaks is removing that retarded artifact hunting system... Like seriously, whole point of stalkers being in the zone ARE ARTIFACTS, and CoP just dumped it down like its some trash feature that no one use. In my opinion best and most realistic way to deal with it is would be: Removing visible anomalies areas from the map. Spread smaller invisible areas all over the maps so player would need to use detectors more often because he would not know where he would get artifacts. Convert detectors to detect just anomalies(radius, distance, even show icons on map) and notify player if artifacts are present in area, not MAGICALLY spawn them. Only more expensive detectors would show exact location of artifacts. Give some NPC, especially Scientist, options to sell/share by doing missions coordinates to those areas with info what artifact you can find there(so after that you will have marker on map where that anomaly is) Send squads more often to anomalies areas, so they dont just wander around without a reason in game waiting to encounter enemy. Set faction missions to take over anomalies, after all factions would probably get most money from them... because AGAIN, this is one of reason why they are there. Do simpler "cooking" artifacts system like in other mods, where you can toss random items to anomaly and wait if it create artifacts. Add special items to the scientist that have bigger chances to create artifacts, or instead of putting 1000 different vodka/trash to game put there special components/minerals that would be base to create artifacts. Make artifacts less common but WAY more expensive, so we dont have situations like in most mods where you sell artifacts just to get TWO fricking bandages... like seriously any modders who do such pricing should be slapped in the face with hammer. go back to SoC ""rpg feeling"", where you actually spend time deciding what artifacts take, what stash and what to sell. And especially do different pricing for different buyers: scientist would give most money for them, noob stalkers would also buy anything because they dont know what is what. barman and other sellers would put good price only for less common artifacts because they can sell them outside immediately with good profits. Optionally create new type or "unfinished"/spoiled artifacts that you can randomly find or get when cooking them in anomaly will not work, such artifacts would be smaller, have more radiation/negative stats but still can be sold by fraction of original price of proper artifact. Just by fixing that artifact hunt system give you dozens of new ideas for missions and WAY more time spend in game actually doing something instead of just wandering around shooting everyone. By just removing those visible anomalies areas you have totally new mission and dialogs where npc's sell you info or reward you with coordinate to them, giving you access to previously not found/visible areas where you can find artifacts.

1) Already done. 2) Done, but artifacts still tend to spawn more torwards anomalies. 3) Detectors don't spawn artifacts. Artifacts spawn randomly regardless of the player but will only become visible if the player is holding a detector within a certain radius. You can still see the artifact's trail going through the anonamly, but it will not take form and allow you to take it unless you have a detector powerful enough to detect it. 4) In CoC 1.5 you can place map markers yourself, it might annoy some players that they have a marker they cant take away so I think Im just going to let the player control their own markers. I do like the idea of scientists selling information/hints, though. Maybe similar to CoP where the scanners tell you a few potential artifacts within an anomaly. Maybe you could buy this information for convenience? 5) Agreed, and doable. So I'll work on adding it. 6) Agreed. 7) Still messing around with stuff, so I'm not going to show off too much incase I end up changing everything. There will definitely be new ways to use artifacts, though. 8) This is the way I have it, I see artifacts as "jewels" of the zone. 9) I have a lot more variety in both artifacts and a much wider range of stats, both positive and negative. There are much more meaningful choices to be made and players might even stash away artifacts they only use for certain things (ie, kill a bunch of guys with your defensive artifacts, then equip your weight carrying artifacts to collect the loot) 10) I already have several similar ideas/stuff already implemented like this. So yeah, I agree.

i think it would be great if artifacts had weirder more lore-driven effects than just silly stat boosts. like every bullet that hits you has a chance of only doing scratch damage, or mutants will try to avoid you at night. especially if these effects aren't immediately obvious and take some experimenting to figure out.

And maybe you could pay a scientist to research what it actually does? Giving you a useful tooltip explaining its effects after the research is done? Just an idea to add onto yours. That being said, this is completely possible and actually fairly simple due to some useful hooks. Theres definitely some unique shit I could do. Any ideas?

speaking of artifacts, would be neat to be able to infuse weapons with them or smth, like a gravity artifact to make bullets hit harder or other fun effects :V

well as well as the ones i suggested, one that lowers the damage threshold at which wounded mutants will run away might be cool. i also thought of maybe one that makes your hitbox smaller as long as you aren't currently in combat, making you harder to spot and giving you more leeway to see enemies before they see you. but it would also have some negative effect like emitting radiation or constant psy damage, so you couldn't just wear it while walking around.

In my STALKER themed roleplays we've always delved deep into artifact effects, ranging from really useful to novelty to annoying to actively dangerous. I'm not sure how complex artifact effects can get in the actual games and obviously some effects don't translate to gameplay, but some of the gameplay mechanic effects we use include causing equipment to degrade faster, cause false reads on detectors (including your geiger counter and the trusty yet oft-forgotten anomaly detector), hallucinations and delusions (as far as game implementation goes, maybe use the miracle machine's psi creatures or make friendly stalkers randomly appear as zombies?), increase damage with melee weapons, improving low-light visibility while fucking with daytime vision... Most of these are meant to be passive effects that affect the holder just from being in their inventory unless sealed in special containers - so you can't just unequip one that causes hallucinations to escape them when convenient, you'd have to actually rid yourself of it. I think that's possible because I'm pretty sure Soup does it. Some were more passive and could probably be implemented... we have one that appears to be completely inert but which after being thrown away randomly turns up in one's pockets, in containers, or in anomalies in place of their own artifacts. There is one that appears entirely beneficial at first but makes you look like a monster to other stalkers, so until you realize the artifact is making them hostile, you are a pariah. We have many more with effects that wouldn't translate to gameplay in any way I can think of. But STALKER is a setting with a lot of potential depth that is rarely explored.

Some of these things could be possible. Off the top of my head, heres a few things I could do: -Make all stalkers hostile to you -Make you 'invisible' (or atleast harder to detect) -The psi effects are just spawned NPCs, that should be possible through scripting -Nightvision/Dayvision would just be an effect overlayed the player's camera, I believe that should be easy Making NPCs look like something else seems either really hard or really hacky, but there is definitely a lot of possiblities here. The effects could also be scripted to either only apply when equipped or if its even in their inventory.

Lovely to see another upsurge in modding interest, that Dead Air mod looks cool but boy does it ram home how dated the game feels compared to stuff nowadays. Dreaming of STALKER 2 still, perhaps one day.

not till you release wormwood friend :]

Hi Wepl I recently joined this forum because I see that you develop AI and quests for CoC. Do you have a github or a page where we can see you make it? I always wanted to create something for STALKER related to quests but never know how to do it. I know only C. Is enough? Thanks for your work. I am sure it will be great.

No, don't really have a github. However, I will provide all the resources I personally used to teach myself the systems involved with stalker related modding and list them here for everyone. As for prior knowledge, you don't really need any. You will be working in Stalker's scripting 'language' and LUA. And if you can learn C, you can learn LUA. It is very simple. For some useful programs, here: Notepad++ v7.5.6 -Notepad++ is a very useful text editor that I personally use to script and ltx edit Stalker with. Handy tool with lots of customization. https://github.com/revolucas/AXRToolset -ARXToolset is a group of tools made by Alundaio to help with modding. Comes with an OGF viewer, database extractor, and lots of other useful stuff. 1) http://sdk.stalker-game.com/en/index.php?title=Category:Articles This is a list of articles of various tutorials from everything basic to more advanced stuff that I haven't even learned. Keep in mind that these tutorials can have outdated information. The most important ones to read are these: Dialogs -How to create dialogs for quests Logic -You don't nessecarily need to read it all, but it provides the entire list of available logic available while scripting for quests/npcs. Very useful reference. Schemes -Some more advanced AI scripting through LUA, shows you how to modify NPC behavior. Spawning through script -Spawning NPCs through scripts is much easier than editing all.spawn, and allows for more flexibility. 2)- Call of Chernobyl The official Call of Chernobyl forums. Both General Discussion and Modding Tutorials have useful information, I reccomend you read every thread. Here is some VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION!!!: http://forum.epicstalker.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=924 -How time works in scripts. Just good to know. http://forum.epicstalker.com/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=292 -How to create dynamic tasks for CoC. Very useful and informative. http://forum.epicstalker.com/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=611 -Creating a unique NPC. This is important so you can create NPCs and then script them to do stuff for your quests. http://forum.epicstalker.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=413 -An older tutorial about smart terrains. Still useful. Also, here's some examples of some quests I made while I was learning. I will do my best to explain how it works. ; This belongs in a tm_* file. It is a dynamic task. [wepl_actor_freedom_scout_task_1] ; If you read the dynamic task tutorial ( http://forum.epicstalker.com/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=292 ), you would know that this is how you add a dynamic task to an NPC. With npc_profile_name_task_1, npc_profile_name_task_2, etc. This would add a dynamic task to the npc "wepl_actor_freedom_scout". prior = 10 ; Priority. This is how often the engine updates to check the player's progress on the objective. Keep this around 10. The lower you go, the more it updates but keep in mind that it also takes up more processing power. Only go below 10 for important stuff. stage_complete = 1 ; stage_complete starts at 0, and when our status_functor function increments the value to equal the stage_complete value, the quest is finished. This is how engine knows that the player has completed the quest. icon = ui_inGame2_Propavshiy_chasovoy ; Icon that shows up in the "quest log" title_functor = title_functor_freedom_scout_generic ; Instead of a static title, a title_functor allows for the title to change dynamically depending on what stage the player is on of the quest descr_functor = title_functor_freedom_scout_generic ; Same thing as above, except for the description of the quest. The description is what you would see when you hover your mouse over the quest in the "quest log" fetch_descr = wepl_actor_freedom_scout_task_1_job_text ; The information the NPC gives the player before they accept the job. For example: "I have a zombie problem. Would you take care of it?" target_functor = target_functor_wepl_actor_freedom_scout_task_1 ; Where the objective marker will be located for the quest. Has to be a game object ID to have one. If none, there will be no marker. status_functor = check_squad_killed ; The status_functor calculates what stage the player is on of the quest, which also decides what title and description the quest would have, and also decide whether or not the player is finished with the quest. on_init = % =create_squad( wepl_actor_zombie_rookie_squad : jup_b207 ) % ; On initialization of the quest, we spawn the squad "wepl_actor_zombie_rookie_squad" in the smart "jup_b207". To see the squads, or create your own, look at the squad_descr files in gamedata/configs/misc. To see what smarts exist, use -dbg in your CoC shortcut and enable the debug hud. on_cancel = % =remove_squad( wepl_actor_zombie_rookie_squad ) % ; If we cancel the quest, remove the squad so the player cant infinitely spawn squads. ; This is our status_functor. This decides what stage the player is on so the quest may use the appropriate title and description. ; This belongs in task_status_functor.script if task_id == "wepl_actor_freedom_scout_task_1" then tsk.stage = 0 ; Default the stage to 0, meaning incomplete. if has_alife_info( "wepl_actor_zombie_rookie_squad_dead" ) then ; In the squad we spawned, when they die they enable the alife info "wepl_actor_zombie_rookie_squad_dead" which sets the task stage to 1. This completes the quest. Basically, killing the zombies triggers the completion of the quest. tsk.stage = 1 ; Quest complete. end end ; This is our title_functor that dynamically generates the task's title based on the stage. ; Remember, our stage is set by the status_functor. function title_functor_freedom_scout_generic( tsk_id, field, p, tsk ) if field == "title" then return game.translate_string( tsk.stage == 0 and tsk_id .. "_title" or "wepl_actor_freedom_scout_task_return_title" ) ; Basically, if our task's stage is at 0, which means incomplete, simply use the job's title text ( for example, "Kill the Zombies"). However, if the task's stage is 1, which means the job is complete, use the return text ( for example, "Return for your reward" ) end if field == "descr" then return game.translate_string( tsk.stage == 0 and tsk_id .. "_pda_desc" or "wepl_actor_freedom_scout_task_return_pda_desc" ) end end ; This is the target_functor that places the objective marker on the map based on the stage of the quest. function target_functor_wepl_actor_freedom_scout_task_1( tsk_id, field, p, tsk ) if tsk.stage == 1 then return tsk.task_giver_id or nil end ; If the task is complete, put the objective marker on the quest giver (so the player knows to return for their reward) local smart = SIMBOARD.smarts_by_names["jup_b207"] ; If the task isn't complete, we put the objective marker on the smart "jup_b207" which is where we spawned that zombie squad. Giving the player a good idea where to go. if smart then return smart.id end end

@Wepl I'd advocate for you to eventually work on documenting and hosting the source files of your work on a more public access repository the likes of github, once you find yourself satisfied with the project. Stalker as a franchise needs stories and experiences crafted into it more than ever I believe. With many new releases effectively being remixes of gameplay mechanics and the fact that narrative and quest based modifications are often kept under an aura of obscurity, lock or key, or are eventually mutated into a mess, the experience has become stagnant and new blood cannot make new content for the games. I mean, just count how many quest mods have come out in the years since Stalker 2's cancelation. The only ones that come to my mind are OGSE, Lost Alpha, and Valley of Whispers. Contrast that to the mountains of compilation soups, combat remix mods, and misery clones. By making something new of that sort and publishing it for people to enjoy and use as a learning tool to create new quest mods would breathe new life into the modding community. I know I would, having already tried and failed because of the modding community's change of priorities.

Well, when I release my mod it's of course under the expectation that they can poke and prod through the modification's files without my permission and edit/copy/borrow whatever they want. I'm personally under the opinion though, that rather than obfuscating my work, I should rather keep it as organized, simple, and well-documented as possible for those who wish to learn from example. Which I am more than happy with. Not sure if I'll use github, I honestly will just probably have one singular download for both players and modders to keep the mod concentrated in one place so anyone who wants to learn/make their modifications to my mod know exactly where to start and can jump right in. I do, however, want to nurture the western stalker modding scene however I can, and if github helps, I'll use github. Also still expirementing with the idea of concise video tutorials on a wide variety of topics.