[MISERY 2.1.1] Project Ukraine - A tweak based on Les Miserables. Thread - MISERY mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

So first off, hi! Let me introduce myself, I'm known as Kelse by a very, very large sum of people. I have gone by Kelse for 2 years, and after fixing Les Miserables I decided I'd let Nokte work on his own series of tweaks, while I branch off into my own little rebalance, as of right now, the only thing I have is a bunch of Les Miserables tweaks (which you can find over at the thread, which is right HERE > Moddb.com <)

I want to make Project Ukraine something that is based around what the community wants, so therefore, I mainly made this thread right now, to ask what kind of additions and things the community would like to see in the future, for right now, there will not be a download as you can get the latest version of my current updates from Nokte's thread, I mainly just want to ask the community what they want to see, so I can put it in Project Ukraine. Right now, Project Ukraine is basically just Les Miserables updated for MISERY 2.1.1 (which was done by yours truly. )

TL;DR What do you want to see in a series of tweaks?
What could I make better?
What could I add?
What can I fix?

Thanks for reading!

Thanks to:
AnonTim
Alun
Nokte
SizzleYourPits
And, you, the community, for helping me start (and further develop) Project Ukraine.

Had it not been for all of you, it's very possible I never would've started.

Hi, first of all, thanks for all the hard work you put into Les Miserables. I haven't tried it, but it seems like a good tweak, I'm gonna try it eventually. What I'd like to see is the same as everyone, more guns!
But other than that, I really want to see an expanded quest list:
- Expanded storyline
- More sidequests

I would like to have more missions on the main quest, but make it so that the traders will help you with your quest, but they want you to help them first, by finding documents, doing investigations etc for them. Also, repeatable quests like kill a stalker (or group of stalkers), bring item from A to B (maybe with despawning muties to free memory but instead spawn in stalkers that will hunt you...), etc

Bring back the reward system for completing achievements, maybe adding in some more (like stalker hunter or bandit hunter, which would increase spawn rate for the opposing faction, and spawn more high level npc). Have it mean something to try and get the achievements.

I f you could implement some of this, that would be awesome.

I've been using Les Miserables for a while, thanks for your work on that. We can only benefit from more tweak options, glad to hear about this. Not sure how much effort/time you'll be putting into this, or what kinds of tweaks you're willing to do, but I have some suggestions that will probably take some work, if they're even possible.

The thing I want more than literally anything in Misery, is the ability to toggle walking. I like to take my time, for immersion and gameplay reasons, and having to hold the walk/low-crouch button down constantly kills my fingers. That's on the very top of my wishlist.
Secondary to that, would be a hold option for sprinting, which is currently "keep sprinting until you stop moving."

Also, myself and others have some issues with the NPC looting mechanics.
See this thread: (https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-misery/forum/thread/npc-looting-losing-guns)
Basically we are being forced to rush in and loot unsafely in combat because otherwise NPCs will rush in and take dropped weapons and loot bodies, even in the middle of combat, or because bodies despawn way to quickly, especially if you need to quickload a couple times. It doesn't make a lot of sense, gameplay wise, and it's very frustrating.
Having NPCs not loot until after the threat is completely gone and having the human NPC despawn timer not start until you or an NPC has opened their inventory would improve gameplay a lot, imo.

Those would be the most helpful changes to me, if they're possible, and if you're willing. I'll probably come edit this a lot as I think of more.

Edited by: MadeYouLook

I have indeed noticed that NPCs will yololoot other dead NPCs, that alone caused me a great deal of frustration, I will personally look into it for my own tweak, seeing as it's part of the reason it's so difficult to make money in Misery, one of the things I'm currently focused on is having a percentage chance for NPCs to drop whatever suit they're wearing when they die! (And by a percentage, I mean a very low percentage, around %0.005) but I ran into some issues with how Misery handles items that NPCs will drop on death, they use so many different files that it's near impossible for me to check the specifics on what the NPC will drop (and seeing as how the file itself is nearly 30,000 lines, it's a real pain to go back and single-handedly modify every stalker in the zone's chances.)

Another thing I plan to do is convert voices over to the Ukrainian version of the game's voices, as was suggested a while back but never done, because of how in-depth the Ukrainian version of the game's voices are.

As for sprint toggling and walk toggling, I will look at how walking is handled but I believe walking is handled in the engine and not the actual game's scripts, thank you for the suggestion, however.

On another note, I do not plan to add any weapons (because every time I mess with weapons I get a crash and the only useful information that comes out of it is "stack trace:" even when looking in the logs, so it's probably my own fault.) however, I will look into creating more quests that can be repeated, however, I'd much rather make them "go here and kill this guy" instead of "travel from Point A to Point B" (because those missions are extremely repetitive, and a pain in my neck to create.)

Thanks for the suggestions to you both, and as of now, in the Les Miserables tweak that I fixed, I believe I destroyed the Recon's weapon balancing (in a bad way, probability for weapon misfiring/jamming is way too high.)

EDIT: Found out why multiple weapons are removed on death, and it seems it was intentional by ScarabParamit, not sure why they'd do it intentionally.

EDIT2:

Is this the issue you were talking about? Where more than one weapon will not drop?

Edited by: Kelse

Kelse wrote: Is this the issue you were talking about? Where more than one weapon will not drop?

Uhh, Milen doesn't mention anything in his post, so I assume you're talking to me. I didn't say anything about multiple weapon drops?
If you're talking about something raised in the thread I linked to, one of the other posters must have been talking about that.

MadeYouLook wrote:

Kelse wrote: Is this the issue you were talking about? Where more than one weapon will not drop?

Uhh, Milen doesn't mention anything in his post, so I assume you're talking to me. I didn't say anything about multiple weapon drops?
If you're talking about something raised in the thread I linked to, one of the other posters must have been talking about that.

You said that NPC looting was an issue, I was reading the thread and someone said that when an NPC picks up a weapon and dies with another one equipped then whatever other weapons that are in their inventory disappear, I was wondering if this was the issue.

I was talking about to: NPCs rushing in and looting weapons and bodies in the middle of combat, illogically, and NPC bodies de-spawning too quickly, causing you to be unable to play as carefully and intelligently as you could, because you have to rush in and beat NPCs and "the clock" to weapons/bodies, often under fire. This is obviously a problem.
That's the issue I raised (in the second post down) in the thread I linked to. Other posters agreed and also pointed out separate issues, including the one you're referring to, about multiple weapon drops. I'm sorry for the confusion, perhaps I could have worded my posts better.

Edited by: MadeYouLook

MadeYouLook wrote: I was talking about to: NPCs rushing in and looting weapons and bodies in the middle of combat, illogically, and NPC bodies de-spawning too quickly, causing you to be unable to play as carefully and intelligently as you could, because you have to rush in and beat NPCs and "the clock" to weapons/bodies, often under fire. This is obviously a problem.
That's the issue I raised (in the second post down) in the thread I linked to. Other posters agreed and also pointed out separate issues, including the one you're referring to, about multiple weapon drops. I'm sorry for the confusion, perhaps I could have worded my posts better.

Ah, okay, yeah, I've noticed the rushing in as well, but I've not noticed the despawn timer! I'll be sure to up it so that you can take your time more and not have to worry about the bodies despawning, as for NPC looting, I'll see about removing that because I can see how it'd be annoying! Thanks for being so patient with me, I understand that it can be frustrating to speak to me because of how I was failing to understand.

I will definitely look at this!

Another option as to looting could be making the animation for mutant looting optional (either in options or as mentioned in some other post I don't remember, buy having the "Hunters kit" in your inventory) and also increase the time before a mutant body is badly decayed.

Edit-------
Another idea, but this might be very hard to implement, would be to be able to make good ammo out of bad ammo, using spent casing to choose the caliber for the bullet. Would be nice to be able to loot bad ammo from mutants (as in they were shot but not killed and now have the bullet still in their bodies).

Edited by: milen

milen wrote: Another option as to looting could be making the animation for mutant looting optional (either in options or as mentioned in some other post I don't remember, buy having the "Hunters kit" in your inventory) and also increase the time before a mutant body is badly decayed.

Edit-------
Another idea, but this might be very hard to implement, would be to be able to make good ammo out of bad ammo, using spent casing to choose the caliber for the bullet. Would be nice to be able to loot bad ammo from mutants (as in they were shot but not killed and now have the bullet still in their bodies).

Thanks for the ideas! I'll raise the badly decayed timer, and I'll also add in an optional animation for looting the mutants, if you have any more suggestions please let me know!

I'm back to annoy you more. A tweak I would be interested in using, is removing the Exo-Skeleton suit from trader inventories entirely, and instead making it available from the beginning via Nimble, for an extremely high price. (as in 500,000 - 1,000,000 rubles)
I tried to do this myself a while back, but I'm not as good at this stuff as you, and couldn't handle sifting through all the scripts files and gave up.
Also, I thought this thread would be more popular, but it's just me and Milen. Where all the Misery folks at? :/

Edited by: MadeYouLook

MadeYouLook wrote: I'm back to annoy you more. A tweak I would be interested in using, is removing the Exo-Skeleton suit from trader inventories entirely, and instead making it available from the beginning via Nimble, for an extremely high price. (as in 500,000 - 1,000,000 rubles)
I tried to do this myself a while back, but I'm not as good at this stuff as you, and couldn't handle sifting through all the scripts files and gave up.
Also, I thought this thread would be more popular, but it's just me and Milen. Where all the Misery folks at? :/

Will do that, thanks for pointing out that Misery allows you to buy the suits from the traders, I usually get my Exos from Nimble.

Hello Kelse. I would love to see massive bandit and merc spawning around the time you need to bring the gauss rifle back. By this time you should have some pretty darn good armor and a pretty good weapon. I absolutely love the fire fights. (And not just three or four bandits or mercs... I would love around 10 to 15.) It's exciting when you know they are flanking you and if you don't dash for more cover you're lead filled fast.

Thanks.................. Krawler

Another couple of tweaks...
1) If you look at pictures of what the zone looks like now, they all strike me with one thing: the grass is green, and the weather is not so rainy/foggy. With the weather, I can deal, as they are pictures, and no-one is gonna take a picture of the landscape when it's foggy (oh, look how beautifully white it is, you couldn't even see your hand when extended, hehe). So it would be great if you could add (an optional) texture pack where the nature is a lot greener.

2) Weapon damage is flawed in my mind. I can understand that a boar has a thick bony skull and that 9mm can't pierce it, but come on, a .380 Lapua can't penetrate? It says they will pierce class IV and V armor, but not a skull. It doesn't need to go through the whole boar to kill, you're still shooting the brain.

3) This is more for personal use, but having low-res textures available, so we can play with lower end systems would be great. Or maybe someone can explain me how to reduce the resolution myself. I know Staviis had a pack for misery 2.1, and they says that 2.1.1 has low res textures, but I'd like even lower res. Right now I'm playing with everything at the lowest setting and still am getting a lot of stutter and I don't mean the normal stutter when the game loads a bunch of stuff.

milen wrote: Another couple of tweaks...
1) If you look at pictures of what the zone looks like now, they all strike me with one thing: the grass is green, and the weather is not so rainy/foggy. With the weather, I can deal, as they are pictures, and no-one is gonna take a picture of the landscape when it's foggy (oh, look how beautifully white it is, you couldn't even see your hand when extended, hehe). So it would be great if you could add (an optional) texture pack where the nature is a lot greener.

2) Weapon damage is flawed in my mind. I can understand that a boar has a thick bony skull and that 9mm can't pierce it, but come on, a .380 Lapua can't penetrate? It says they will pierce class IV and V armor, but not a skull. It doesn't need to go through the whole boar to kill, you're still shooting the brain.

3) This is more for personal use, but having low-res textures available, so we can play with lower end systems would be great. Or maybe someone can explain me how to reduce the resolution myself. I know Staviis had a pack for misery 2.1, and they says that 2.1.1 has low res textures, but I'd like even lower res. Right now I'm playing with everything at the lowest setting and still am getting a lot of stutter and I don't mean the normal stutter when the game loads a bunch of stuff.

I believe you can single-handedly remove all the textures and things and get the game back to "Vanilla" state, but don't quote me on that, back on topic, I have already fixed Boars being incredibly strong, I don't know much about textures so I'll try to fulfill your request but there's no promise.

As for the merc + bandit spawning idea, I'll look at it and make it optional, because I know other people might be annoyed by it.

Thanks for the suggestions, guys!

I forgot to mention, in regards to walking, it drains stamina at the same rate as running/jogging, which makes it almost pointless. If you do end up working on a walking mechanics tweak, having walking take much less stamina than faster movement would be a great change.