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

Glow stick demonstration #2 video probably not that impressive from a modder's perspective but man I think that's really neat.

The glowstick - off the top of my head, I would probably create it similar to how fires are - a fake anomaly that emits a light source. Simple enough in concept. The fact that the flashlight stays on though after being dropped and actually looks pretty good - pretty impressive, imo.

I figured the glowstick probably functions in-game like a light-emitting artifact. There was something like that in OGSE called "Candle." Simple, kinda useless, but so flavorful.

The fork of X-ray called Oxygen uses volumetric lights by default for NPC flashlights. Doesn't seem to hurt perf too bad, but sometimes it gets a bit ugly (flickering, etc) Looks really cool when walking around zaton at night, though.

yeah, most oxygen lighting work good, but it have lots of glitches and some objects and grass often look weird in some specific lighting conditions.But its not only oxygen problem, lots of mods, even based on default game always have some lighting problems.... Also last thing about artifacts: for holy Monolith sake, dont you dare putting those stupid and annoying containers like in misery/com... this is just idiotic and literally rape whole concept of artifacts in Stalker. I would understand to have them as mission item, like for example scientist need pure, ot touched artifacts or you found very radioactive one(anything more than +20rad need it), but whole point of artifacts in game are to gather them and use them as stats boosters and money-maker, for most of time when mod force me to use containers, I just totally skip artifacts because its just huge buzz killer to use them.

I disagree, as it helps balance out both economy and...er, game balance a bit if you have to acquire containers to be able to collect artifacts. It helps extend the feeling of progression when done right, I feel. Plus, it was a part of the original design docs. I don't agree with it totally preventing one from using them for stat boosts, maybe requiring a particular container (or just the suit upgrades), but combine that with CoC's artifact degradation for balance.

I most likely wont be including an artifact container system. While I do agree that it can increase the amount of possible progression - I think the system is plain clunky and I've yet to see someone make a good UI for it. And while I don't want the player to be able to get to a point where they're completely immune to everything, I do want players to be able to make meaningful choices with their artifact loadouts without feeling too restricted and noticing the differences between different setups. I do, however, have ideas to extend the progression of artifacts as I also want them to be more of a rarity, starting with just plainly increasing the prices of all artifacts and decreasing the spawn rate overall. On top of this, the most valuable artifacts can only be found in certain conditions/anomalies that are exceedingly more dangerous than average. Alongside this, I also have a few ideas about having to 'refine' certain artifacts before being able to use them, but I haven't worked on this much yet and it will most likely change. The perfect system, in my mind, is an artifact balance in which artifacts are both challenging to get but also rewarding. I'll just have to play around and see what I can get, though.

Just because it was in "original design docs" doesnt mean its good. I have no idea why some people have such obsession with early builds. Not without a reason most of that was removed from game, starting from crappy sounds ending in ideas like that container. And people instead of improving game spend time bringing back stuff that was even by devs consider as bad(not always, because some parts where dumped because of time but most of it was just BAD ). If you all like early builds so much why dont you all just move to builds like 788 or 1098 where Stalker was not even stalker but was Unreal action game? Or why dont you just skip Chernobyl and use original story of fake industrial area(forgot the name) most of map designs where from that time, thats why maps have so much hills that are not present in real Chernobyl area(most of fans know development story of Stalker so i dont need to write about it again). Or better why dont we all move Roadside Picnic and do what it was in that book? where most of artifacts where carry by hands, most of artifacts where used later to even run cars, does anyone use containers there? of course no. As for balancing game and economic... how, please tell us how containers, massive radiation to all artifacts and additional tools like tongs would "help extend the feeling of progression". Artifacts and playing with deciding what to use what to find to use other artifacts because of their negative stats give Stalker that "RPG feeling" where you need to spend time choosing stats, just like you need to spend time choosing guns, ammo and outfit. You need to spend time to pick up specific artifacts to go to more radiated area or spend time finding artifacts that help you with bleeding or give you carrying boost. Please tell me how containers hel you with that? Because its not that like you pick few artifacts and its end, you maxed your stats, you need to spend time to find artifacts that reduce radiation that other artifacts give, in the same time keeping an eye to how much free space you have for them. Concept of SoC artifacts and anomalies is good and all it need is just better configuration of stats, not to do them like lazy mods that just put random numbers on them.

Why are you so aggressive? Just trying to share my thoughts on this. Chill, please? Yeah, a lot of old build stuff was not good, I get that. I've played and read enough about them to know that much. But there's still ideas that were good and, hey, were reintroduced in CS and CoP...And CoC. I just feel like containers would help slow down artifact-related money collection relatively early. As opposed running around a few levels once you find a Bear or Veles, stuffing a bunch of random artifacts in your bag, and never having to worry about money for a long while, though this could definitely be offset by changing spawnrates and distribution of artifacts throughout levels without it. Supposedly the economy is a little less silly in CoC 1.5 so maybe this is already fixed, who knows. I've barely touched anything related to STALKER lately because it's just been so stale for me as of late. As far as the RPG feeling, if you actually read my post I said I have no real issue with it, I just think a rebalancing is in order, as it can be relatively easy to get to the point of "oh, I never have to worry about radiation" or "Psi damage? Pssh"

I would really like some map edits to make the Zone more vehicle accessible. Tons of mods add vehicles back in but you have to have, like, 3 different cars just because you can't drive through Rostok. I never got the impression that vehicles magically shouldn't work in the Zone since several factions are known to use them (the Monolith drives trucks from the NPP all the way to the Cordon) and having half decent support for cars would be a good middle ground between walking everywhere in CoC and fast travel.

They should add vehicles but also add the need for fuel. Viola! Your cars no longer work.

The problem is, even the tiniest of map edits require modelling, texturing, and a good bit of knowledge about the XRay engine. Out of all the things for modding Stalker, it's the one I'm currently struggling the most with to learn. There are, seriously, about 2 good English tutorials out there that explain the basics and then you're on your own. Every other tutorial is either outdated or in Russian. Not to mention, this is even if you can get the map editor running on your computer. The editor was compiled for Vista I believe so getting it to run on anything past that can be finnicky at best, and it seems to have a specific hatred for Windows 10, which is what I use.

Yeah, I remember making map edits being such a slog from start to finish - with plenty of crashes. @Beacon , can you provide any insight?

it's an effing nightmare

Its not aggressive, its argument with examples and my personal irritation of people who try so hard to bring back old ideas that even devs dumped because they where bad. I have no idea why for past year people really act like sensitive flowers that just break down with any negative opinion. Because I didnt change my writing style(its harsh and biased but Im not agressive toward anyone personally), back between early '90 to about 2013-2016 people could DEAL with others negative opinion and actually take it to the account to get something better or think about their own opinion, and now everyone grumbling about "aggression" or "hate speech". If I would be aggressive trust me even without swearing It would be visible -_- You like containers, ok, you mentioned that it was mentioned in early dev documents, I said that just because it was it doesnt mean anything, and I included counterargument of why not to stick to other dev documents or source of Artifacts and anomalies them self: book "Roadside Picnic". Also I still dont see ANY "help extend the feeling of progression" you mentioned. Because as I said, there are other SIMPLER ways to not have your "artifact-related money collection". I wrote how to deal with that in some way in previous comment: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Series Megathread + its a matter of setting proper stats and pricing for artifacts and put them on map like flowers, they would be less common and you would actually HUNT them, get proper coordinates for anomalies, deal with more dangerous anomalies and find buyer for them. As for economy in CoC 1.5 its not only one mod with that problem, I actually found out that most of mods brag about tweaking it in description but in reality they all are just copy/paste. No one take items/artifacts pricing and weight seriously and we end with mods where pack of cigarettes weight 300g, bandages cost fortune and weight more than 100g(where military grade pressure bandage with oxycellulose/silver coating weight 25g, I used them and they not only light but also small). Or food that cost more than artifacts and weapon stupid pricing where you can bring to trader 10 guns in 60-70% condition... and you cant afford even two medkids... I can put list of mods and stupid items pricing/weight and they all will be almost identical, because no one take it seriously. All people want realistic things in stalker, but no one set items right, and trust me game would be hard as hell with realistic pricing and weight. Its the same like with damages. Instead of "balancing" NPC and player damages like most of mods do, all you need is make them 1:1 the same, where bullet is a bullet, if you get hit in head you are kaput, body? you bleed like butchered pig and helmets and armor can stop only slower and smaller calibers and its difference if its player or NPC.

I have to agree with the fact that it's silly how people always think older = better in video games. Not just in stalker, you see it in other games, too. I hate dumbing down as much as anyone, but sometimes streamlining something isn't a bad thing. For example, you often see people hail Morrowind as the peremptorily best TES game, and while whether it's the best is personal opinion, it has a plethora of flaws and un-thought out design decisions that have been fixed in Oblivion and/or Skyrim. It really is irritating how many people will austerely defend every single of its mechanics, despite some of them being really just not very good. An example of a mechanic people complained about was the removal of mercantile as a skill, and how it's dumbing down the game. The mercantile skill in morrowind and oblivion is absolutely dreadfully designed - it levels ridiculously slowly to the point where unless you specifically grind, you'll likely only up it by a handful of points in your entire playthrough. And the skill naturally is pretty significant as it decides how much money you will by able to get. So during character creation you have to remember to set it at about 50, unless you like to be at an disadvantage the game doesn't recompensate you for through any other mechanic (that is, unless you wanna sell arrows 1 by 1 for five real time hours). I personally really am NOT a fan of many of the changes they made to the game in Skyrim (nor do I like Skyrim as a game in general), but turning Mercantile into perks of speechcraft was beyond any doubt a good choice. That's a bit of a digresson anyway. I don't have any strong opinions about STALKER features that were streamlined.

It's not what you say, it's how you say it. Reading your posts I'm surprised you are even a stalker fan. A large percentage of your posts are just full of negativity about modders not making good mods, how much you hate vanilla stalker features while you present your opinions on balance as if it was some absolute fact.

You see what you want to see. I don't have problems with most of people because they don't focus on HOW something was written but they focus on content of post/comment. Only some of you focus on irrelevant things. The same go to about negatives that by you I say about every mod... Like seriously I wonder how it's possible that you know all my comments of every mod, because I complain only about 3 stalker mods, rest is just small things that I personally don't like. You want to tell me that I can't post my opinion because you disagree with it? Also as a fan of Stalker or anything else I actually have most rights to complain because I know it from experience. I don't complain about something that I didn't saw/played. And because I'm a fan and spend lots of time playing those mods I can backup my opinion not just cry about something that I read like most of people. Not to mention that I complain about specific things that can be changed and balanced. So instead of crying how someone write people should actually focus on content, because it's nothing more like snowflake behavior, of complaining that someone don't have the same opinion as them... Hilarious... You can spend time putting negative emojis on my post but I would rather prefer if someone actually post proper opinions with at least minimum backup info on it. Now it would be nice if instead of doing annoying offtops about my writing that only you don't like, you all would discuss about what we where talking here in the first place or you all forgot about that?

I don't wanna pile in Paranoia, but Alun has a point, and the reason people are taking badly to what you say is, I think, that you're so dismissive of peoples' ideas. You might not be doing it on purpose, but it's easy to feel hurt when you're telling people their ideas are "BAD". Please do disagree with peoples' opinions - there's a good diversity of posters with different viewpoints, backgrounds and experiences here - including you - and the thread is richer for it. If you put forward your ideas politely and respectfully, people will engage with you on the same level. But if you call people snowflakes and suggest that their opinions are ridiculous, they'll do the same to you.

People like to bring back old ideas and iterate upon them. It's fun to do, either as a thought experiment or as actual implementation. Of course, copying shit 1:1 from the old builds isn't gonna work - a lot of shit was ditched for a reason, but there's still some good you can take out of it. I have no idea why for the past 2 years a lot of people have a need to be increasingly dickish in their attitudes, and insult others who just want to have a friendly discussion. Just because you disagree with an opinion, it doesn't give you any real right or excuse to be an asshole....Which, whether you think so or not, is how you're coming off. As Alundaio and others have said, the content of your post is fine. You have good points in return, and I actually agree with a fair few of them - but the way you're writing and presenting them is, frankly, pretty fuckin' rude and it makes people discount what you're trying to say. It's not hard to tone it down a little bit, and people will be far more respectful to you in return. Again, like I said in my post, I actually do agree with you on the re-balancing, pricing etc. My biggest problem with STALKER and a lot of mods is the progression is often completely fucked up. It's either really, really easy to make money relatively early on and not have any concern for the world, oooor you get MISERY and have 2 bullets for the first 14 ingame hours I just feel like a rebalancing in combination with making artifacts harder to hoard (whether through containers, rarer spawns, higher weights, smaller backpack sizes or any combination of changes) would be a very welcome change to the game economy without having to turn it into a complete and total slog in something like MISERY. I don't think I've seen your other posts on how to fix this problem, so my bad. And...yeah, I agree with most of this last paragraph, I feel that quite a lot of lot of economy 'rebalances' don't feel fully tested for extended play. I'm not big on the 'super-realistic' play style myself. I like a balance of...y'know, gaminess and realism. If I wanted milsim, I wouldn't be playing STALKER.

please take this somewhere else

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/107131/dc70b439-28cb-4df5-87ac-f890b2f42976/2018-05-09_23-20-28.webm maybe i should leave kruglov with himself for a bit and then come back

Yes, there are no reasonable money sinks in the game and almost every item has an infinite quantity due to looting NPCs that are just like the player; Carrying weapons and food. Outfits are the rarest thing and probably one of the only reasonable things you can turn into a money sink, because the only place to get them is from a trader.

You know one thing that I always wonder about is why nobody made it so that groups like Duty effectively extort money out of people by entering safe zones or passing through checkpoints. You'd think that the big groups would go out of their way to extort individual loners for utilizing the security they provide. That'd be a bit of a money sink in and of itself, imagine having to pay off Duty, Freedom, Bandits, even Mercs and Grunts guarding science labs every time you go through their neck of the woods. Also, paying for fast travel via traveling groups and guides, paying for medical services, paying weekly for a container in a safe hub, getting robbed by the bandits while you're still low level(why in the hell are they not doing that in vanilla COP already? Loners mug you more than Bandits in that game), and a more tighter military presence stipulating you to pay fees just to get past chokepoints in places like Cordon, Darkscape, and Agroprom would make sense too. People always focus on the mercantilism but that's always an unavoidable exploit, there's always other ways to bleed the player of cash. Hell if we already acknowledge that suits can be broken you might just want to consider modifying it so that suits can be broken beyond repair and just require the player to straight up buy a new one. It worked in SOC.

As much as I like the repair system I also think that not having repairs in SOC changes the game in a nice way. Having to buy new suits or change to a different weapon spices it up a lot more, than in COP where I bought 1 gun and used it for the rest of the game.

Part of the problem is they lowered jamming conditions.

I'm the kind of person who likes to get a set of equipment that I like and just use it for a while instead of changing guns and suits like underwear. Guns being unrepairable bugs me. Wear and tear is great because it can change up the moment to moment gameplay but I don't like constantly swapping out guns.

what gameplay elements have mods added? this seems to be a common insistence from people who only ever played stalker with mods. I'm not being an asshole, I'm just pointing out that this seems to be a common belief that doesn't actually hold water when examined - most of the mods on the western scene are glorified gun packs or changes to a-life and weather. Usually some combination of both. Otherwise the actual gameplay is left largely untouched. So all that is really being said is people harbor a desire for more content to actually use it in. I would agree that is the crux of the problem - its very hard to be interested in the same story, same maps and same scripted events 10 years later, and resorting to tedious and mendacious meta gameplay ala MISERY to try to provide an illusion of a new game is not very effective.

I'm not sure why you're contradicting me? Lots of mods have improved gameplay elements, that's what most mods do. I said in my post that's not enough and mods should be focusing on story. Mods that improve gunplay, improve artifact hunting, improve the faction war mechanic, improve the economy, etc etc etc are all improving gameplay elements.

Wepl, thanks for help. I will when I have time start using what you gave to modify the game (It is a long road I think). Grenadiac, I think Cretin mean "Gameplay element --added--" instead than "Gameplay element --improved--". OGSE as example added many new elements (Like that freak toy, as example). Call of Chernobyl allows player to instruct followers. This new project "Dead Air" seems to add a lot of elements, as example the glowsticks, quick knife attack, echo sounds and so on.