STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl Mod Thread

[Stavrophore]

If anyone wants to play SoC i recommend autumn aurora, or radiophobia for more modern[and buggy] rendition. Vanilla SoC aged poorly.

 

[janior]

you know A-life is good when the NPCs start shooting you through the walls(just like russian counter strike players online)

 

[Ol' Willy]

SoC has pretty poor A-life, a-life was refined in CoP and greatly expanded in CoC by Alundaio.

SOC A-life is weird, sometimes it can do incredible moves and flank you, sometimes it can be dumb as a brick, staying idle and pointing his gun at the roof, or wall, or something.

This is not a-life, just general ai bugging out.

This is to be expected because ai in stalker is simple, but fairly unique as it gives bots lots of freedom

 

[ciox]

I still have no idea what causes that bug that turns up sometimes, which makes all enemy NPCs aim at like 90 degrees away from you, and maintain that offset as if they convinced you are 90 degrees from them.
It seems to affect every NPC in the map when it activates.

 

[normie]

SoC has pretty poor A-life, a-life was refined in CoP and greatly expanded in CoC by Alundaio.

SOC A-life is weird, sometimes it can do incredible moves and flank you, sometimes it can be dumb as a brick, staying idle and pointing his gun at the roof, or wall, or something.

This is not a-life, just general ai bugging out.

This is to be expected because ai in stalker is simple, but fairly unique as it gives bots lots of freedom

it's also a matter of if you've quickloaded on the map, it does things to npc alertness and scripting

 

[Ol' Willy]

SoC has pretty poor A-life, a-life was refined in CoP and greatly expanded in CoC by Alundaio.

SOC A-life is weird, sometimes it can do incredible moves and flank you, sometimes it can be dumb as a brick, staying idle and pointing his gun at the roof, or wall, or something.

This is not a-life, just general ai bugging out.

This is to be expected because ai in stalker is simple, but fairly unique as it gives bots lots of freedom

it's also a matter of if you've quickloaded on the map, it does things to npc alertness and scripting

Ahh, yes. If you quickload and at least a single enemy is killed, all bots from the same group are alerted and given dead-on on your location

This makes stealth runs pain in the ass as you have to single segment them

 

[Ryzer]

SoC has pretty poor A-life, a-life was refined in CoP and greatly expanded in CoC by Alundaio.

SOC A-life is weird, sometimes it can do incredible moves and flank you, sometimes it can be dumb as a brick, staying idle and pointing his gun at the roof, or wall, or something.

This is not a-life, just general ai bugging out.

This is to be expected because ai in stalker is simple, but fairly unique as it gives bots lots of freedom

it's also a matter of if you've quickloaded on the map, it does things to npc alertness and scripting

Ahh, yes. If you quickload and at least a single enemy is killed, all bots from the same group are alerted and given dead-on on your location

My guess is that it was made on purpose to nerf weapons with a silencer like the op SVD-Dragunov.

 

[Stavrophore]

My guess is that it was made on purpose to nerf weapons with a silencer like the op SVD-Dragunov.

Afaik, its an engine feature/bug, some values are not stored permanently in the save[like viewcone position] and are reinitialized upon load, the ai viewcone do a 360 degree so you are technically loading into the game already detected. If you are behind them in sufficiently thick bush on reload, the ai won't see you, but if you are behind them but in the open you are soiled. Why would they design it in this way, or omit such bug, idk.

 

[Gerrard]

When you load or enter a level your character does a weapon swap which is loud as fuck (the actual loudness is completely separate from how far away NPCs can hear it) and alerts enemies. I think it's fixed in ZRP though.

 

[normie]

When you load or enter a level your character does a weapon swap which is loud as fuck

nah, or rather not what matters in this case
see entering the agroprom military base from the underground - entering the level, everything plays out as it ought to, but load a quicksave from the exact position you spawn from the underground and the alarm will be triggered and all the mooks will be going mental

often the alarm triggers without playing the alarm sound lol

 

[Ol' Willy]

My guess is that it was made on purpose to nerf weapons with a silencer like the op SVD-Dragunov.

Nah, bots already have anti-sniper pattern of behavior

If you are behind them in sufficiently thick bush on reload, the ai won't see you, but if you are behind them but in the open you are soiled.

Nah too, they will get detection on you even if you are behind walls

When you load or enter a level your character does a weapon swap which is loud as fuck (the actual loudness is completely separate from how far away NPCs can hear it) and alerts enemies. I think it's fixed in ZRP though.

And not this too, sound will never alert bots

AI has three states:
calm - least awareness, moving along fixed paths
suspicious - triggered by seeing dead comrades, sound or gunfire, AI starts roaming around (loud sounds) or looking at the source (quieter sounds). This state is individual for each bot, they return to calm soon
alert - triggered by bots seeing you, all bots in the group get alerted and move in combat patters

Most likely reason is that saving bug is a crutch to avoid saving states of every bot in the area.

In fact, if you kill like half of a given group without getting them to alert, move sufficiently far away, save and reload, and then return - bots will remain at calm

 

[Gerrard]

Imagine being so confidently wrong.

 

[Ol' Willy]

There are people who play pure stealth in Stalker (without getting bots to alert)

If you want to try this at home, be warned, this requires a lot of meta and trial. I had no patience for this kind of thing

 

[Ol' Willy]

Imagine being so confidently wrong.

nigger, sound doesn't turn bots to alert

In fact if you are not detected you may shoot with silenced weapons under their feet and they still won't see you, just freak out

 

[Stavrophore]

Yeah, but they will be in suspicious state, and their detection improves, so they might detect you if the bush alpha transparency[which engine uses for detection values] is not enough.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Yeah, but they will be in suspicious state, and their detection improves, so they might detect you if the bush alpha transparency[which engine uses for detection values] is not enough.

In the video you can see how the guy abuses this thing.

If you make a little noise, the bot will look at the direction of it - allowing you to kill or avoid him

Just don't do too much noise or bot will roam around

suspicious has two sub-stages after all

 

[normie]

There are people who play pure stealth in Stalker (without getting bots to alert)

If you want to try this at home, be warned, this requires a lot of meta and trial. I had no patience for this kind of thing

lmao this is how I play
I also bring the "single segment" approach to combat setpieces so everything plays out in ordnung ie busting Nimble out of the carpark Splinter Cell-like, or Dark Valley bandit base, which can be a bit of doing to save the Dolg being executed next to the pit

 

[flyingjohn]

So after downloading a 100 gb of mods, i had a revelation. I am not even gonna play 10 of these things because of machine translation/misery survival wank/ horrible custom quest lines.
Anybody here who has played a lot of Stalker mods can recommend their top 10 in terms of major changes to the vanilla or custom stories?

 

[Stavrophore]

So after downloading a 100 gb of mods, i had a revelation. I am not even gonna play 10 of these things because of machine translation/misery survival wank/ horrible custom quest lines.
Anybody here who has played a lot of Stalker mods can recommend their top 10 in terms of major changes to the vanilla or custom stories?

I think most of story featuring mods are in russian, so if you dont know russian you will be at mercy of machine translators and that's a complete wank.
I would recommend

https://www.moddb.com/mods/zoneexpanded-road-to-the-north​

https://www.moddb.com/mods/chernobyl-chronicles
and photographer mod.
True Stalker is ok. but nothing groundbreaking as community was hyping, it is very polished and very modern, with nice UI and QoL.

 

[Silva]

 

[razvedchiki]

live?!

 

[ferratilis]

True Stalker is ok. but nothing groundbreaking as community was hyping, it is very polished and very modern, with nice UI and QoL.

Honestly, I thought True Stalker is terrible, and removes all the dynamic things that made Stalker interesting. It's a mostly linear experience that relies too much on cutscenes and has limited AI. While playing it, I thought "this is what Stalker 2 will be like, just with better graphics" which is not a good feeling to have while playing a Stalker game.

 

[Stavrophore]

Honestly, I thought True Stalker is terrible, and removes all the dynamic things that made Stalker interesting. It's a mostly linear experience that relies too much on cutscenes and has limited AI. While playing it, I thought "this is what Stalker 2 will be like, just with better graphics" which is not a good feeling to have while playing a Stalker game.

Its very true to SoC that had very limited non-roaming AI tied to certain zones, the ai couldn't roam between ai-life zones or maps like we see with anomaly derivatives. People who hail SoC as holy grail forgets about stuff like this, mostly because of nostalgia. No one also remembers the arcade shooting mechanics.

 

[Ryzer]

I only play vanilla Stalker personally, I don't bother with mods desecrating the experience. It's fine as it is.

 

[Silva]

live?!

Yes except for Viktor's voice which is recorded. Halfway through the song there's a beautiful homage to him in the big panel. I didn't even know the guy and got emotional.

Btw, I discovered KINO through Stalker radio mods. Always loved the atmosphere of the Skadovski or Sidorovics bunker under rain with this song in the background. I thought it's songs were present in all mods by now?